8 questions & answers
Drawn mostly from material from the last few months...
TLDR: Some questions and resources to make you think about how you use your time.
Word count: 539
Read time: 3 min
I’m experimenting with a different format this week: eight poll questions which will provide me with interesting info about my subscribers while stir up some thinking for you. Then there are some suggestions for further reading. Do please take a second to reply to this and let me know if this has been useful and how, or indeed if it hasn’t, and why.
Timeboxing is a big step on the path to an intentional life. And it’s so easy to try. So, if you haven’t, try it! The first chapter of the book is effectively a quick-start guide. Much of the free past material on this newsletter will help, too.
There’s also a free 7-day timeboxing course I made. It’s delivered straight to your inbox, once a day for seven consecutive days. Get it here.
There are countless distractions, lurking, just waiting to strike in our weakest moments! But the three biggest buckets, by far, are these. If you can systematically protect yourself from these, that’s probably 90% of the protection you need. I wrote about each of The Three Big Distractions in a 3-part series.
Which leads naturally, for me, onto the next question…
Make some plans, or even just one. Set a monthly recurring timebox to monitor and ensure progress. You can do that right now.
But don’t overcommit! This infographic about the reasons we overcommit and how to combat them became my most popular last week. See it here.
Here’s a 2x2 matrix which brings this to life, with examples. The image at the top of this piece does a lot of explanatory work:
One of the mostly reassuring, helpful responses to task-asks is: ‘Timeboxed for Date/Time’. Why that’s such a reassuring, helpful, productive, harmonious response is explained here.
Do live you want to live intentionally? What does that mean to you? Can that mean anything but doing that consistently, and systematically? I believe that an intentional life is a good life, a life well-lived. Timeboxing is a simple system to achieve that.
Most of us prepare for work meetings. Most of us say that life outside work is more important than work itself. Yet we give curiously little forethought to our interactions with our loved ones, outside of work hours, when we’re off-duty.
It’s more fashionable these days to talk about the softer benefits of any kind of productivity method (reduced stress, clearer thinking, better communication, more control). But there’s a hard, raw, substantial productivity boost too.
Marc
Links you may like
7 days of Timeboxing (the free email micro-course)
Timeboxing, the book (US)
Timeboxing, the book (UK)
Timeboxing, el libro (Español)
Connect with me on LinkedIn (I will say yes!)