Timeboxing daily tasks is one of the quickest ways to increase productivity.
My approach to timeboxing is simple:
- Go through my task list and decide on what tasks need to be completed today.
- Put the tasks into my calendar as appointments with clear start and finish times.
The benefits of this approach are as follows:
- I reduce my stress levels because I don’t commit to tasks that will take more hours than I have in the day.
- I am able to consider my meetings, appointments, etc that are already in my diary when deciding on how much I can commit to completing for the day
- I can visualize my day’s commitments very clearly in terms of time slots
- Using the native calendar app on my iPhone I can easily reshuffle my appointments by holding down and dragging a given appointment to a different time slot (in the day, week, or month) in response to the ever-changing demands of each day.
When combined with the paper clip strategy this can be particularly powerful.