Reader Question: What Does a Time Box Look Like?
October 4th, 2006 by Dave Cheong
In my previous post, I mentioned that I am going to flesh out some of the responses I have made to people who have contacted me directly for advice. Continuing with this, here is an email I received from a reader (let’s call him John) which I thought may be useful to share:
Hi Dave,
I’m an artist. I also have OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). To that end I have a very difficult time staying on task with things and making things happen. I’ve been searching for ways to organize myself in an effort to not procrastinate, break down tasks etc. My question may be elementary and silly but what does a time box look like? I mean, is it a flow chart? Is it open to interpretation, just a title, and a list of things to do to make the task complete?
Thanks for your time and I like your site.
John
Hi John,
Thank you for your email. Let me see if I can tailor a response to your needs.
As an artist, I imagine you work on things which by nature are open ended. For these types of tasks, it is difficult to identify when something is complete. I used to sketch a lot in the past and although I didn’t do it at a professional level, I know what it feels like when a piece of artwork is in progress and never quite complete. In many ways, the 80/20 rule applies, where the remaining 20% takes up 80% of the time!
I can’t say I know what it feels like to have OCD. If I did have it, I imagine it would affect how much attention I pay to detail and how I approach work and life in general. Even the simplest and most mundane thing could be time consuming.
This is where I think Time boxing could really help. Time boxing is essentially fixing the amount of time you have available to work on things. When the time is up, you make a conscious decision at that point whether it is done or not. When working on a sketch, one can decide after 30 mins if the sketch is “good enough” and can be considered complete or not. If not, you allocate another time slot to continue working on it. This time slot can be the next thing you do, or it could be later in the week. It doesn’t matter which really. The most important thing about Time boxing is being aware of the passing of time.
It is pretty much open to intepretation. What I suggest for you is this:
1. Plan your day out
Start each day by deciding how many Time boxes you need and what you hope to achieve in these Time boxes. For you, I suggest being explicit about what is going to be done in a certain Time box. As with all goals, make sure they are well-defined and includes the 6 elements of a good goal. The other benefit of doing this at the start of each day is you have a holistic view of the day. I mean, by the end of each Time box, it is easier to make a call on whether a given task is complete or not simply because you have a holistic view of the day and can judge how much work is outstanding.
2. Try not to overrun
Make this a goal and record everything. What I mean is for you to make it a goal for each day to stick to your Time boxes. In the beginning you might get it wrong and be overly optimistic about how much you can accomplish in a given day. However, over time, your estimates will become better as you become more conscious of time and how long it takes to do things. Try and record everything, even things which are mundane. For OCD, I imagine you would find yourself constantly doing things again and again, just because you can’t help yourself. If you record how much time you spend on a given task, if you find yourself spending more time than usual on it, then use the recorded times to convince yourself to stop and move on! Also, in doing so, you focus on the outcomes and results and less so on the activity part of the work.
3. Buy a stop clock
I have recently decided to get a stop clock which sits on my table, going “ding” every 30 mins. I’ve only been trying this recently, but it makes me aware of time. Sometimes when I’m working, I lose track of time and could overrun on a Time box without realising it. However, with this simple yet practical change, the clock reminds me every time 30 mins elapses. It might be a good way to interrupt your thinking/working and remind you to focus on results and getting things done.
Format of a Time box
As for your question about what a Time box really looks like - simply it is free form. It can be whatever you want it to look like. However, the following elements must be present in a Time box:
- Time - how long it is. Note, you don’t need to have the same time duration for all your time boxes. Some Time boxes can be shorter than others depending on the actual time of day and the work to be done. For example a Time box for me in the morning before work is 1 hour (because that’s how much free time I have before I have to get ready) but a Time box during a working day is only 30 mins (I plan my work around short time slots so I can better report on progress).
- Task title - the work to be done. This statement describes succinctly what you aim to do in the Time box. For you, that could be working on a sketch. For me, that could be spending time on writing an article or responding to emails. In your case, I suggest being explicit and spell things out fully.
- Outcome - when it is considered complete. For a given task, identify when the task is complete. To do so, write down the outcome of the task. Use this at the end of every Time box to decide if what you aim to do has been accomplished or not.
Does this help? I hope it does and wish you all the best. It would be great to hear what you come up with and what works and doesn’t. If you haven’t read my article on how to stay focused, please take a look. In it, you may find a nugget which you can incorporate into your daily habits and patterns.
If there is anyone out there who has experience helping people with OCD or time management in general, feel free to leave a comment.
John, good luck to you!
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Reader Question: How to Limit Time on ‘Good’ Distractions
October 4th, 2006 by Dave Cheong
First of all, let me begin by apologising for not having posted an article for the last couple of weeks. In many ways, that’s a bad thing because there is a backlog of semi-finished articles I have planned to publish which are begging to be finished. In many ways though, that’s a good thing because it means I am busy, being productive and have other things (like a screaming baby) to occupy my time.
Being the perfectionist that I am and still not 100% happy with the quality of the articles I am in the middle of, I thought I should take a break and answer a few questions some readers have asked. I think the questions are relevant to a lot of people and others may benefit from the suggestions, which is a good reason to share. I’ll try to keep the post as anonymous as I can. I hope they don’t mind me sharing.
Hi Dave,
Since childhood I have found myself getting constantly distracted and not being able to focus on the task/activity I am working on. Although I got through more than three decades; through college and having good jobs, I feel if I wasn’t distracted as much as I am I would have fared much better or even excelled. I desperately need to find a solution to this.
One major distraction right now for me is login to the social network I belong to - dedicated to mothers and women. I find a lot of solace and answers to some of the challenges I face and I am addicted. This network/site has been very helpful for me so I can’t see it as a negative thing when I use your strategy but I am trying to limit how many times I access the site but it’s not working. I cannot afford to do that from work. What do you suggest?
Thank you,
Jo
Hi Jo,
Thank you for sharing and I’ll try to help as best as I can.
For me, I find that my time is often scarce and I have to make conscious decisions on how to spend them. Most of the time it is about opportunity costs - that is, what am I giving up by choosing to spend my time doing X instead of Y. The most important thing here is to make decisions consciously. Don’t let things happen without your control - if that happens you only open yourself to disappointments.
In your case with the social networking, I have three advice.
Firstly, whenever you want to indulge in it, make a conscious decision. Ask yourself, is this what you want to do right now? Is there something else you should be doing instead? What are the opportunity costs? If the decision to indulge in the distraction still stands, then ok but you don’t have to feel bad about it, because you have weighed up the benefits/costs and have made the best decision you can at the time.
Secondly, get it out of the way early in the day and/or try to limit the time you spend on it. If it is useful and it sounds like it is, then you don’t have to eliminate it from your life. All you need to do is allocate appropriate times during the day. Perhaps that’s early in the morning for 30mins - 1hr before going to work. Or maybe it is 10 mins between logical units of work (or timeboxes as I call them). Once you know there is a fixed timeslot you can login and look around, you won’t constantly feel as though you are missing out. What this means is that for all other times during the day, you can focus on what you should be doing instead.
The last thing I want to mention here is the Diminishing Distraction technique you are referring to can work from a positive angle. Instead of diminishing the enjoyment you could get in the distraction, try to enhance the experience of what you should be doing. In your case, if you think you could excel at work and achieve greater things if not for the distraction, imagine yourself actually attaining your goals. What does that mean? Maybe you could get a promotion? Maybe you could get a raise in your salary? In turn what does that mean? It could mean more discretionary money for spending on a holiday in Europe! Or buying that car you’ve always dreamed about. Get the idea? Once you put things into perspective, it will become a lot easier to overcome your distraction.
I hope these suggestions help. If you haven’t read my other articles, I suggest taking a look at:
- 18 ways to stay focused at work
- Waking up early and consistently
- Time boxing is an effective getting things done strategy
- How to Overcome Distractions Anytime
If there is anyone out there who has a suggestion on how we can help Jo, feel free to share.
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How to Overcome Distractions Anytime
September 13th, 2006 by Dave Cheong
Each of us at one stage or another have succumbed to a distraction or two.
Let’s face it. We all do it. Personally, when I’m at home, I find I would make excuses not to sit at my desk. I’ll be flicking through some catalogue, turning on the tv or playing on the Xbox. When I’m in the office, I’ll gravitate towards social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious and Reddit. Unfortunately, some of us tend to be weaker than others and indulge in our desires more often than we really should!
Distractions as a whole are a huge drain on every aspect of who we are. It takes our focus away from what we should be doing - our tasks, goals and purpose. This is why we have to eliminate them from our lives if possible! Personally, I find if I was to indulge in a distraction, a hour could go by and before I know it, I’d blow away an entire time box. Generally, this makes me feel drained and disappointed, not just in myself for having been weak but also about the lost opportunities and productive time I could have spent working on an article or researching a business venture.
So what can we do about it? If you haven’t done so yet, take a look at two articles I wrote about how to stay focused - 18 ways to stay focused at work and the more generic 11 ways to staying focused. These tips are great, but inevitably distractions will happen. When they do, how can we reduce our urge and tendency to indulge in them?
Here’s something very simple I do in my head whenever I feel the urge to indulge in a distraction. I don’t know who came up with it originally or even if it is unique to me, so for now, I call this technique Diminishing Distractions. This is how it works.
Essentially, a distraction is attactive because of two reasons:
- It gives us pleasure.
- It takes pain away.
When we indulge in a distraction, we focus our time and energy on something that is inherently more pleasurable than what we are currently doing. Solving that problem is hard, so I’ll just surf on Digg instead. Finishing this document is going to take some time, so let me squeeze in 30mins on the Xbox. Making that call to the customer will be challenging, so let me read the news first. Now, tell me if you’ve never felt this way before. The reason these things are attactive is because they either give us pleasure or take some pain away.
So in order for us to minimise the time we indulge in our distractions, what we need to do is either decrease the pleasure we get or the pain they take away. The trick to doing this is by quantifying our experiences. That is, measure how much enjoyment we hope to get by indulging in our distraction and then diminish that enjoyment in our minds to a level low enough that it is no longer appealing.
To do this:
1. Rate the experience on a scale of -10 to +10. What the scale means: -10 being something I really hate doing and there’s nothing in the world to make me like it and +10 being something that gives me ultimate pleasure and utter enjoyment. For example, at any given moment, playing on the Xbox may rate +6 on my scale (I have fun and it gives me pleasure but it’s not the best thing since slice bread).
2. Think of things to lower the rating by one or two points. Once you have the rating, try to think of things to make the experience less enjoyable. This doesn’t mean a massive jump from +6 to a -10. It means lowering the enjoyment in a small way. For example, I might associate the discomfort of sitting on the floor with playing on the Xbox. After 30mins in this posture, it’s going to hurt. This will lower the experience for me to a +4 on my scale (It’s still fun, but less so now than before).
3. Repeat until the experience is neutral (ie a rating of 0). Keep thinking of things to diminish the experience (either the pleasure or pain) until you don’t really care either way whether you do it or not. Once you are indifferent, you stand a better chance of resisting the distraction. Here are some of the things I think will make the Xbox experience less enjoyable - lengthy wait times when saving, small tv with bad colours, tired shoulders and a sore neck.
4. Consider what you should be doing instead. At this point, look at what you’re currently doing or plan to do. Ask yourself would you rather be doing this or indulge in your distraction? For me, I ask myself “Would I rather finish this document I am in the middle of or play on the Xbox?”. I find most of the time, because the distraction’s experience is neutral, I’d rather continue what I’m doing. If this isn’t the case, move on to the next step.
5. Make the experience unappealing and undesirable. If you still rather indulge in the distraction, then repeat Step 2 and make the experience unappealing and undesirable. The trick to this is you don’t have to come up with completely realistic things. All you need to do is convince your mind about what you want it to feel regarding the distraction. For example, what would make the Xbox unappealing for me are - melting ice cream on the controller (I hate getting my hands dirty), not wearing my glasses (what’s the point of playing when I can’t see what’s going on), ear plugs (I can’t hear a thing) etc. Keep doing this until you take the experience to a -10.
Once you hit -10, this being a level which you associate with things you absolutely hate doing and nothing can make you do it, it becomes really easy to resist the distraction. You don’t even have to put up a fight. As far as your mind is concerned, you don’t want to do it.
I call this technique Diminishing Distractions - that is we are diminishing the experience we hope to get by indulging in the distraction. Simple isn’t it? It is. But that’s the beauty of it. When faced with a particular undesirable urge, what we need is a simple technique we can use and rely on to suppress that urge. What we don’t want is a technique that has 50 checklist items for us to go through, because in most cases we either won’t bother or it’ll take too long to work! With some practise, you will find you can associate a 0 or a -10 to any distraction and make them less desirable than what we should be doing.
Here’s the other beautiful part of this technique. Not only can you apply it to the distraction, you can also apply it to the task you should be working on. All you have to do is apply the technique in the steps I’ve outlined above but in a positive way and try to make the experience a +10 instead. By doing this, you will increase the gap between the experience you will get from this task and the distraction. For example, let’s say I really wanted to focus on writing. To make writing a +10 experience, I could visualise myself writing a top notch Diggable article (hint, hint), having lots of positive comments from my readers and earning lots of money from Adsense! If this doesn’t make this a +10 experience, I don’t know what will! 
I’ve written in the past that we can be happy if we choose to. I just want to take a moment to reiterate a particular point in that article because I think the repetition will help the message sink in. If you rely on external events to determine your happiness, than you relinquish control about when you will be happy. By using the technique I’ve outlined above, you take control of the way you feel about a particular experience. If you apply it to other aspects of your life, you will be able to control whether you have a -10 experience or a +10 experience irrespective of what happens. Sometimes we cannot prevent bad things from happening, but what we can control is how we react and respond to them.
That’s food for thought.
If you choose to employ this technique in your daily lives, drop me a comment or message. I would like to hear whatever feedback you may have on this. Good luck with your battle against distractions!
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