Timeboxing

[Olle Linge]

I think timeboxing is probably the most effective way to get things done, especially when it comes to open-ended tasks such as reviewing vocabulary. I've used this method for so long and so much that I almost forgot that some people don't. A few weeks ago, I told a friend about timeboxing and he came back a few days later saying that it was the best thing since sliced bread. Obviously, there are people who should know about this and who would benefit from knowing about it, but who has no idea. That prompted me to write an article about it:

Timeboxing Chinese

Basically, I have two things I want to discuss. First, for those of you who already use this (perhaps because it's included in some SRS):

• Have I forgotten anything of major importance in the article?
  
• Do you have any practical tips I haven't already included?
  
• Do you have any tips about timeboxing other things than reviewing vocabulary?
  

Also, for those who have not used timeboxing before:

• Does the article explain why timeboxing is so useful?
  
• Try it a couple of times, what's your opinion?
  

Basically, I'm both after refining the article since I think this is something I'm likely to refer to in the future quite a lot, and I'm also interested in hearing what other people think in general about timeboxing. Using it for SRS is quite obvious, but what about other areas?

[WestTexas]

In my experience, the whole timeboxing thing makes me less productive. Ex, "I will concentrate hard on Anki for 15 minutes". So I start doing it, but I have no reason to get them done fast, I can mess around or space out, because eventually that 15 minutes will pass. But if I say to myself, I will do all the cards then do something else, then I will do the cards as quickly as I can and concentrate the whole time so that I can do something else sooner and not worry about it. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. I tried the technique before and I found it made me much, much less efficient about doing things.

[Olle Linge]

Interesting. How would you handle tasks that are impossible to finish so you never could do the other things you want to do? Let's say you have 2000 new words you want to learn for some reason. I guess you would still box it somehow my limiting yourself, but perhaps not with time? At least in Anki, you can choose to be limited either by time or the number of cards, so perhaps the latter would make more sense to you?

[Gymnosopher]

Personally I still have my doubts about timeboxing. I recently read a chunk of AJATT's so called "Timeboxing Trilogy" (a cruel lie at 10 parts!) and thought it sounded really interesting, in fact I came across it via the "Timeboxing is Scary" where several people all give their positive impressions/experiences so my hopes were initially high. So whilst I had passively/accidentally been using Anki's 'Timeboxing' function I felt like now I understood what it was for though had initially treated it as a way to keep track of time/progress and have an excuse for a break!

So what did I do? I dropped my Anki timebox from 25 minutes to 5-10 minutes with the intention of doing that much SRS then something else then back etc. Indeed, on AJATT it is suggested that Khatz's made up breed of 'nested' or 'dual' timeboxing increases efficiency. I.e., saying I will do XXX for 10 minutes does seem like a good way to cut procrastination and get on with tasks, esp. things that are long and daunting (oh I wish I'd tried it at the early stages of my Degree thesis!) so that you can get into them, however if you have an hour you want to fully utilise and be efficient the idea put forward is to split that up into timeboxes to keep your concentration/energy levels up and switch back and forth between tasks.

[here is something short of your article where you say go and take a break in the starcraft examples]

But what did I find? Well firstly it was hard to do. I don't have a solid built-for-purpose timer and using one on my PC was a pain. A pain to keep track of, a pain to set up initially (with more than one task, granted) and a pain to live by - a common example you use is for things like doing the washing up, and though it's a small-ish task to do and saying 'lets do this for 10 minutes' can get you into it I'm not so sold on timing my supermarket shop as Khatz claims to! Also, I'm not sure about the rigidity of the seemingly scientific process (10 min here, 15 min there, 5 min elsewhere) with real-world tasks. So whilst Anki works well by having discrete flashcards and letting you finish the last one before 'closing' the timebox, if I am working through exercises in a textbook I kinda want to finish what I'm doing before I wrap up - even if not finishing the book which would take a long time etc.

Perhaps then it is something for more 'macro-goals' as you call them, where saying you want to study 2000 flashcards is too much and to keep going until you burn out / are to tired to go on, is unproductive..?

Indeed, those who I've seen say they don't think it's for them seem to all be along the lines of 'what's wrong with saying "Sit Down. Shut Up. Get On With It!". Personally I've always been more of a procrastinator [look at the length of this post...to think, my 25 min Anki box just closed!] and seriously respect those who can sit down and work - so am working on emulating that behaviour, getting to work now not later and trying to prioritise tasks with more manageable 'micro-goals' etc etc. So I wouldn't say 'lets do 2000 flashcards' (I actually have just over 2k unseen flashcards :S) but I'd say do I have time to do more flashcards today, and that until I'm tired - perhaps prompted by the timebox-over pop-up on Anki though I'd over-ride it if I wanted to keep going and thus invalidate the timebox at least once.

On balance I think it's a really interesting idea, the geek inside loved the mathematical explanations given on AJATT for why it should work and the techy thought great - life can be dumped into timeboxes and let them sort it out like Anki my flashcards. Yet in practice I found it hard to implement as stated above, and have filed it under 'try again sometime' in my head. Perhaps I'm lazy and want some sort of free software where I can program in a series of timeboxes on my pc/itouch/smartphone etc and have it keep track in the background only coming to the foreground to tell me to switch - but even then it's hard when not all work is on the pc. And there's still the issue of switching tasks at suitable locations - you stop reading a book at the end of a page (if not chapter) rather than midway through a sentence right?

And the major downside of timeboxing? If you're just doing 1 timebox it feeds into laziness!!! 5 minutes on Anki done? Great! Let's watch that 3 hour film we've saved for a rainy day... We really need to work on making our attitudes so that things timeboxed are less chores and thus we're keener to switch to doing some other work. If we were more like machines... Oh if only...! AJATT (to continue harping on) has some interesting ideas about how timeboxing might fight fatigue and boredom though... If implemented better.

Anyway, to quickly answer your questions (lost track of direction and time a little there...): I'd read about timeboxing before your article so not sure what someone new to it would make of it, though as an idea I think I've mentioned above some points that I find interesting that you don't cover so much - but of course yours was 1 and not 10 articles! No tips I'm afraid as I failed it.

/mammoth post [can you tell I've recently been thinking about this and had no outlet?!]

[WestTexas]

Snigel - if I am doing something too big to handle, your example of learning a large number of new words in Anki being very fitting, then I break it up into chunks that are not based on time. So if I have not reviewed for a few days and have like 400 cards queued up (as I have right now from partying this weekend), I will say to myself, "I will do 100 now, then go it lunch, then do another 100, then do 200 in the evening," or whatever

I am an aspiring writer and started doing 'timeboxing' to work on my novel. You know, some days as a writer everything comes out nice and easy and some days it is rather difficult and strenuous mentally. So I would say to myself, "Just write for two hours and then you can go do something else for awhile." However, I found that I would often mess around for the first hour or so and not put serious effort in. So I started making my goals more like, "Write the first half of this chapter then take a break," and I found I got it done faster and didn't procrastinate.

If I am really busy with stuff what I do is I schedule a 'buffer' period at the end of each day of like 1-2 hours or so (if it's longer then that, I'm not actually that busy). Then, if I get everything done efficiently, I can just chill and relax for those 1-2 hours. I find this is a good motivator, and I end up getting more done than if I just tried to work on stuff for one full day without any leisure time.

[imron]

I am an aspiring writer and started doing 'timeboxing' to work on my novel. You know, some days as a writer everything comes out nice and easy and some days it is rather difficult and strenuous mentally.

Advice I remember reading from an author I like was to always finish writing for the day halfway through a sentence. That way at the start of the next day you'd find it easier to get straight back into what you were writing.

(I'm not an aspiring writer, but that piece of advice always struck me as being interesting).

[roddy]

Sorry, but is there a difference between 'Timeboxing' and 'Scheduling a certain amount of time in which to do something'?

[Gymnosopher]

In my understanding of 'timeboxing', and guessing at your 'scheduling', the difference is that in the former you have time but are using the technique to be more productive whilst in the latter you're busy but putting aside a set amount of time in the day to get something done. So the first would be 'I'm going to reply to emails for 10 minutes' to get yourself to be thinking reply Reply REPLY and not be distracted by other websites etc so that at the end of the 10 mins hopefully you would have jumped right into being productive and got more done than you would have otherwise done in a longer period of time filled with procrastination. Scheduling would then be - I'll look at my emails at 4.30pm before knocking off work, though leaving the actual task at hand more open ended and potentially prone to time-wasting.

More like 10mins reading a chinese book, 15 minutes doing flashcards, 10 minutes podcasts 5 mins skyping etc. than I will study Chinese from 5.30-6pm

[Olle Linge]

I think the difference between timeboxing and simply scheduling available time is quite big. When timeboxing, you don't only limit the time you do a specific task based on how much time you have available, you deliberately make it of a certain length you think you will be able to concentrate fully. For instance, I have nothing planned before lunch today and I plan to go through my five leeches and check some of the cards I've marked during reviewing (perhaps they need better examples or something). I have five hours, but I don't just say "I'll spend two hours going through tricky words", even though I might do this as well. Timeboxing would be taking the next chunk of time and use it effectively until that time is up. When it is up, I change task, even if I still feel fresh. My schedule would look more like this, although I seldom write it down:

20-minute box - go through leeches

10-minute box - reply to some e-mails

10-minute box - fight due cards in Anki

Around 20 minutes - have breakfast

20-minute box - go through marked cards

And so on.

As some people have noted, timeboxing doesn't work equally well for all tasks. I'm writing a novel on my own, too, and that is a process where I need at least half an hour to even get started, especially if I need to catch up on what I did last time. However, I have applied similar tactics to areas related to creative writing, such as setting a timer and brainstorming a particular element for exactly ten minutes or tell myself that I'll spend a maximum of ten days rewriting a certain chapter before moving on to the next. It's not comparable to Anki, but creative writing can still be timeboxed, especially when one needs little or no preparation before starting (such as if you write everyday) and don't need to re-orient yourself each time you want to write).

Continuing the discussion about timeboxing in general, I think an additional benefit is that I find that I almost always do more if I have a set limit. This can be a specific time or a specific number of questions, but the limit has to be there. If I have 200 words to review before I go to bed and know that I won't finish all, it's so easy to stop after 10 minutes and 48 words and go to sleep. If I instead make an educated guess at how long I can realistically manage (let's say 20 minutes and 80 words) and set a timer, I can almost always cover more material. This is true for reading and sports as well: It's much easier to read two extra pages if I know that the chapter ends after that, or make another pull-up if I set a goal before starting. These final examples aren't using time to box the activity, but should still provide some illumination on what I mean.

[Gleaves]

I have an anki deck that I use for listening/pronunciation practice that I time. It is something I only want to do ten minutes a day, so the timeboxing option is very useful.

I also time myself when reading. I give myself 2 minutes to see how much I can read in my book, then repeat. I'll also read maybe five pages in a row and hit lap on the stopwatch after each page, then go back and see how quickly I was able to read each page. In both cases, I end getting a ton more reading done than I would normally. But I only do this for short sessions and with easier books.