
You have to get things started. That’s the first step in fixing procrastination. Timeboxing will help you do that. The Timeboxing concept is about allocating or boxing a specific set of time like 1 or 2 hours, 20-45 minutes for a task depending upon its importance and efforts.
How the Timeboxing Works?
- Take a sheet of paper. Write all the tasks waiting for you.
- Right next to every task, mention what you want to accomplish with these tasks. Define your goals here.
- Pick tasks that are important and require immediate attention. For those tasks, give priority and allocate 1 to 2.5 Hrs. of time to work on it.
- Now, identify tasks that take the minimum time say within 15-40 minutes to complete.
- If there is a difficult and lengthy task, segregate it. And, for each block allocate a minimum 20-30 minutes to manage and work. Depending upon the blocks, you can allocate more time too.
- Now you can either start from ‘minimum-time’ tasks or ‘more-time’ tasks.
- Start executing tasks.
- When the allocated time for a task is over, stop it.
- You can take a break. See what you have accomplished.
- See what you have accomplished.
- Now, move on to other tasks with another timebox.
How Timeboxing helps with procrastination?
- It will get you started.
- By knowing that you will work on a task for a little time, you will break weariness and restlessness.
- Thoughts like “It’s only an hour of work” or “just a few minutes of work” will motivate you.
- You will get something done instead of procrastinating and doing unimportant tasks.
If you are highly procrastinating and don’t know how to stop it, try Timeboxing. Work within a fixed time box and discontinue the work after the time expires.