Sequential timeboxing is a technique that builds upon timeboxing, an extraordinarily effective time management tool. It helps boost your motivation to work, overcome procrastination, conquer perfectionism, and ultimately relieve stress.
The basic idea of timeboxing is the following: You choose a project or task that you’d like to make progress in. You set a timer for 30 minutes, turn off distractions such as your phone, Facebook, and email programs, and work for at least 30 minutes on this project or task. When the 30 minutes is up, you can continue working, but you’re free to stop at anytime and treat yourself to a small reward, such as your favorite snack, TV show, a good stretch or even a stroll outside.
Timeboxing works, because even though you may find the task at hand boring, you can work on just about anything if you know that you’ll get relief after 30 minutes, plus there’s a reward waiting for you at the end. The fact that only 30 minutes are available can help you overcome procrastination and perfectionism, and focus solely on making as much progress as possible.
Some excellent articles on the timeboxing technique have been written by Steve Pavlina and Luciano Passuello.
I’m going to adapt the technique of timeboxing to address an issue I’ve been running into a lot lately. Since my online business is pretty new, I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by all the various projects I need to complete – writing new blog posts, preparing notes for podcasts, finding sites to guest post on, re-working individual pages, scheduling radio shows, replying to emails, etc.
I’ve often felt panic at the thought of needing to get everything done all at once, to the point that I actually check out and stop working all together, resorting instead to surfing the internet or distracting myself with social media.
Getting nothing done is clearly not an acceptable outcome. But when I work on one task, I’m easily distracted by something else I’m supposed to be doing, and my attention is spread over so many different things that nothing gets adequate attention. In trying not to deprive any one task, they all die of starvation.
But recently, I discovered an effective way to make progress on several different projects in a short amount of time, thus relieving the panic involved with feeling overwhelmed. I call this technique sequential timeboxing.
Sequential timeboxing extends the technique of timeboxing by scheduling back-to-back 30-minute blocks to work on several different important tasks. In this way, you can address a number of different pressing projects in a relatively short period of time. Not only does the timer motivate you to work, you’ll also be able to concentrate on one task at a time, knowing that you will get to all your important tasks.
Sequential timeboxing can be useful for relieving stress and getting more done, whether you’re a student studying for final exams in several different subjects, a small business owner juggling many different responsibilities, or working in a job where you’re constantly handed a variety of tasks from all different directions.
Here’s how:
- Choose three tasks or projects that you need to make progress on today. These might be three different subjects that you need to study for, or the three projects with the closest deadlines, or just the three tasks that feel most important to you.
- Pick any one of the tasks to get started on. It doesn’t matter which you choose, because you’ll get to all three today.
- Set a timer for 30 minutes. Many cellphones are equipped with a timer function, but you can also use a kitchen or stove timer, or search for a free timer on Google.
- Shut down distractions such as your phone (unless it’s your timer), social media and email.
- Work on your first task for 30 minutes straight.
- When 30 minutes is up, you can stop working and treat yourself to a small reward. Call a friend and make plans for later tonight. Spend 15 minutes on Facebook. Go for a quick stroll around the block.
- Now move on to your second task, and repeat steps 1 thru 6.
Try to keep the break between tasks to 15 minutes or less, in order to keep up your momentum. In this way, you can make significant progress, or even complete, up to three tasks in just over two hours. You are not committing yourself to working so much that you feel deprived of social/leisure time, but you are working a minimum of 90 straight minutes, which is enough to feel a sense of progress and accomplishment.
You can also work for more than 30 minutes on any given task if you’ve built up momentum or you’re in the middle of something you want to finish. Whenever you do stop, your reward is waiting for you.
While it’s possible to structure your whole day with sequential timeboxing, I recommend starting with no more than three consecutive tasks. Even a highly effective time management technique can lose its effectiveness if you go overboard with it 
Quite often, the tasks that we procrastinate on don’t take nearly as long as we imagined, or that they’re not as boring or tedious as we feared. But you’d never know that unless you got started on those tasks – sequential timeboxing ensures that you tackle a variety of important tasks on your plate, all in the same day.
Try it – you’ll like it!
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