The Time Management Technique That Can Work For Anyone - Nir Eyal

This resource first appeared in issue #118 on 16 Apr 2022 and has tags Strategy: Prioritization

The Time Management Technique That Can Work For Anyone - Nir Eyal

I’m in a new workplace, with a lot going on, and it is super easy to get distracted.

Worse still, I can effortlessly justify to myself being distracted and flitting between different things. “I’m still learning the landscape; it’s important for someone in my role to have a broad view of what’s going on everywhere. Who knows what might come up in that conversation tomorrow?” That’s not even really wrong! But it’s far too easy to let that very comfortable and convenient attitude keep my mind stuck on “scan”, noticing every slack ping and reading every email as it comes in (we have a LOT of emails) and watching every talk being given. All those little dopamine hits are way more entertaining than doing the hard work of buckling down to get something accomplished.

Eyal advocates for an approach that has come up frequently before - timeboxing. Actually blocking off time on your calendar to accomplish something specific. This has the huge advantages of (a) actually setting aside time, and (b) implicitly setting the scope of what you’ll do.

Eyal adds two things, First, it’s easy to start small. Just start with one thing that’s been on your to-do list.

Second, if you doubt the need for this, track what you do through the day in two buckets - reactive work and reflective, pre-planned work. Are you spending as much time in reflective planned work as you thought you were? Maybe you need to start time boxing.