Time boxing in 10 minutes

How much can I share in 10 minutes?

Lately, I’ve jumped back into my obsession with time boxing. Time boxing has a bunch of other names. Recently, I found an entire site dedicated to something called “The Pomodoro Technique,” which is basically time boxing with a tomato timer.

Time boxing – and I can’t believe I’ve not done a whole post on this yet – is when you commit to working on a task for a predetermined amount of time and stop when the time is up, regardless of how much you’ve accomplished.

You can take a guess at how long the whole thing will take, or you can pick the amount of time you think the task it worth. <<I like that second approach.

Thing is, you end up pushing yourself to finish (or get really close) in whatever amount of time you allow. If you hadn’t set that timer, though, you probably wouldn’t have come close.

For myself, I’ve found that one hour is a good max. I can go longer, but the key is to stop before I have to, before I can’t work anymore. That way, I’m able to take a short break and get back at it instead of staying out of commission.

Time boxing is, without a doubt, the single best “productivity” tip I know. I go in and out of using it consistently, but when I do…

Ah, I’m out of time for this post. Beep, beep.