Timeboxing - An Efficient Time Management Technique for Productivity

Our inability to efficiently manage time often lands us in hot water, with hordes of delayed assignments and fast-approaching deadlines. Keeping up with the daily activities then becomes a Sisyphean task where you do not actually get anything done but are always in the grind with no way out.

While most of us are eager to start and end our daily tasks on time, very few of us are actually able to do that because of poor time management. Even with a set to-do list or proper planning, staying on track is a difficult feat. Fortunately, we have the gift of different time management tools and techniques that aid in improving our time efficiency.

People use different methods and tools to make the most of their time. On average, a person uses around 13 different methods for time management. Among these different methods, one that has proved its efficiency time and again is timeboxing.

Timeboxing is hailed as one of the best methods for time management. The method targets gaps in time management to help you improve your work productivity. Additionally, the technique can help you fight procrastination and narrow your focus for better working.

This article will answer your questions as to what is time boxing and how to use time boxing.

What Is Time Boxing?

As we mentioned earlier, timeboxing is a time management technique. The unique method offers a different approach to time management wherein you allot a specific time to a task.

This method of management can help you focus your attention on the task at hand without any distractions or lapses in the focus. Your goal is to accomplish the task within the specified time limit. There is no flexibility in terms of increasing your time.

Scheduling your tasks into timeboxes significantly improves the time spent on tasks. When you start your timebox, you have to rid yourself of disturbances to make sure you optimize your working during this time and accomplish your goal.

Hard Timeboxes Vs. Soft Timeboxes:

There are two types of timeboxes that you can schedule your work in:

Hard timeboxes: Hard timeboxes have a rigid limitation where adding a few minutes or even seconds is out of question. It implies the complete cessation of whatever activity you are performing and moving on to the next task. Hard timeboxes can prove beneficial especially when you aim to improve your efficiency over time. It might take a little getting-used-to to come to terms with the method, but gradually you will learn to time your work accordingly.
Soft timeboxes: In contrast, soft timeboxes are flexible in which you are notified whenever the specified time is up. You can then, make adjustments in your work accordingly. Soft timeboxes can help bring back your focus to the task so that you can speed up your work and complete the task as soon as possible.

Choosing between the two is completely up to you!

How To Use Time Boxing?

How to timebox your tasks? Managing your time through timeboxes is as easy as it seems. Follow the following steps and you will realize how easy and quick it is to manage your time with timeboxing technique.

1. Create A Timebox for The Items in Your To-Do List

The first step of the technique involves determining the complexity of each task on your to-do list and allocating a timebox to it. You have to determine the approximate time that will be required to complete the task and create a timebox accordingly.

Make sure to leave some time for breaks and unexpected disturbances that may hinder the smooth working. You should have sufficient time to complete the task within the specified timebox.

2. Set A Timer on Mobile or Desktop

Once you have figured out the time you will spend on each task, you can set a timer that will alert you whenever you have to move on from one task to another. The time will help you stay focused so that you can optimize your work performance during that time and accomplish your goal within the specified time.

You can use your phone or desktop for this purpose.

3. Hard Timebox or Soft Timebox

Before starting the timer, you can also decide whether you will go with a hard timebox or a soft one. A hard timebox will work better if you are looking for perfection and are certain that you will be able to complete the task without any delays.

If you are not sure about the time limits or are afraid that it might take more time to complete the task, you can go for soft timeboxes that offer more flexibility. A soft timebox will give you the freedom to adjust your time and keep yourself focused on the task.

4. Start The Timer

Now that you decided everything, the only thing left is to start the timer for the timebox and start working. The end of the time limit does not only indicate the end of the allotted but also notifies you of the impending task that needs your attention. So, make sure to follow the timebox.

5. Evaluate And Revise

Once you have completed your tasks, evaluate your performance and revise your schedule to improve your work efficiency. Take a look at your performance during the day and analyze whether you completed all the tasks on time? Is there any room for improvement? How can you optimize your work?

With each evaluation, you can identify the gaps in the process and develop strategies to enhance your productivity.

All in all, timeboxing is a simple and easy technique. You can easily use the method to make significant improvements in your work.

Benefits Of Timeboxing Your Daily Tasks

Timeboxing has several benefits to offer, some of which include the following:

Better focus: With specific time allotted to each task, timeboxing can help you focus your attention on the task underway. In such a way, you can also train your mind to stay attentive during the specified time period.
Better organization: Timeboxing will help you become more organized. Since you have specified a time limit for your work, you’ll learn to organize your tasks in such a way so that they get completed within that time limit.
Improve productivity: The technique can significantly improve your productivity levels by helping you stay on track and accomplish your tasks within the time allotted.
Helps deal with procrastination: Timeboxing can be especially helpful if you are dealing with procrastination. The method can help you focus better and invest your time in the task at the right time.
Prioritizing: With timeboxing, you can learn to prioritize your tasks. The most important tasks go first and are allotted time accordingly while the less important ones go next and vice versa.
One task at a time: With laser focus and a specific time limit, you can invest your attention in one task at a time. This way you will be able to complete the task within time and then move on to the next one without any hurdles.
Goal-oriented: Timeboxing is a goal-oriented method, you are not just limiting the time you spend on a task but setting a goal for yourself; your goal is to accomplish the task within time.
Prediction: With a time limit allotted to each task, you can predict the amount of time you will save yourself or the time you can invest in other tasks.
Time-saving: Probably the most obvious of all benefits is time-saving. Timeboxing can prove to be especially helpful in managing your time the most efficiently and getting your tasks done in the shortest time.

With all these benefits, timeboxing can help you ace all your tasks within the deadline.

Tips To Make Timeboxing Work for You:

Before we conclude this article, we would like to add a few tips to make sure that the technique works for you:

Pre-plan your tasks: Before you start with the process, make sure you have planned everything out. For example, which task will you complete first? How much time will each task need? How can you utilize your time most efficiently? etc. Planning is a great way to kickstart your progress and make the most out of your time.
Keep Your Timer in Front of You: To keep yourself focused and avoid distractions, keep your time in front of you at all times. The timer will help you analyze how much time you are left with and how you have to make your way around it to make sure your task gets completed within that time.
Take regular breaks: By taking regular breaks you are not wasting your time but rebooting your system to maintain the same level of energy you had at the start of your day. So, take breaks within each task and between different tasks.
Avoid distractions: Since you have set a goal for yourself, you ought to make sure that there are no distractions in your way. Set aside a space for yourself where you can work, turn off all notifications, and make sure that there are no other distractors in the way of your work. By doing so, you can increase your efficiency.
Set similar tasks together: Moving from one task to another can be difficult especially when both tasks are poles apart. To minimize the time spent on refocusing your attention, you can set similar tasks together so that you can quickly get on with the work without missing a minute of your time.
Use a management tool: If you find it difficult to create a list and create timeboxes manually, you can take help from an efficient time management tool. The tool will help you create tasks with specific time limits. Time tracking features of such a tool will help you keep up with the task.

You can take help from these tips and create efficient timeboxes for your work. These tips will surely come in handy when you are working with timeboxing.

Conclusion:

We hope that this article has answered all your answers related to timeboxing or how does it work. What do you think of this technique? Is there any other technique that you use to manage your time?

Benefits of a Cloud-Based Project management Software [Platform]

The coronavirus pandemic and resulting social distancing at the start of 2020 forced companies that hadn’t already done so to transition to a remote workforce.

While there are numerous remote work benefits like increased job satisfaction and cost savings, the especially suddenness of the transition has its downsides.

The below project management statistics highlight some of the problems the remote workforce faces. These problems can be solved through the use of workflow management features like task assignment and employee workload overviews.

88% of remote workers face inconsistent leadership and miscommunications with other team members
83% of employees report feeling burnt out by a high volume of emails
COVID-19 has increased employee burnout by 12% in two months
73% of employees report burnout
20% of employees cite an unmanageable workload as the number-one cause of burnout

Using project management methodologies, PM software, and having a project scrum master unites a remote workforce and increases project success rates.

According to the Pulse of the Profession study from the Project Management Institute, businesses with a clear project management structure in place have 38% more successful projects that met their original goals than those that did not.

Having a PMO led by a project management professional means companies adopt a clear, standardized approach to project management. A project management office has the necessary soft skills risk management needs to prevent problems like schedule overrun.

Additional statistics showing the value of project management are:

Only 21% of companies have standardized project management systems like waterfall and agile in place
1 in 6 IT projects have a cost overrun of 200%
IT projects with a budget of at least $1 million are 50% more likely to fail to meet business objectives
41% of businesses with a high project failure rate blame a lack of involvement from higher-ups in project management
41% of organizations reporting poor project performance say they don’t get enough support from project management and project sponsors
Project management challenges cost businesses $109 million for every $1 billion invested in a project

(sources: Gallup, Wellingtone, PMP Gartner, PMI, UM Saint Louis)

Business Project Management Today

A business project is classified by content or purpose. Business projects are intended to achieve defined business objectives and are aligned with a company’s business strategy.

Business projects can be called many different names, such as internal projects, administrative projects, or functional projects. It’s important to note that all projects, regardless of type, must meet certain criteria to be considered projects. The primary two requirements are that they are both temporary and unique. This means they have a defined end date and are not repeatable, ongoing tasks.

Three types of business projects

There are three main types of business projects a company can implement:

Strategic projects: These are focused on achieving a high-level business strategy. For example, a company may determine its marketing strategy is to offer the lowest-priced option. To achieve this, they may launch a project to create a process for analyzing market prices and lowering their prices accordingly.
Operational projects: These projects are not tied to the overall strategy but taken on to meet some type of business objective. Upgrading a software system to the latest version could be an operational project.
Recurring projects: Recurring projects happen regularly, but still must be unique and temporary. A good example is technology development projects. If you have a cell phone, it is likely part of a numbered series such as the Samsung Galaxy 9 or Apple iPhone 8. Releases come out every year, or even twice a year, meaning the project to upgrade a phone is recurring. However, each version has a defined release date and unique functionality or requirements.

SYSTEMX BUSINESS MANAGEMENT PLATFORM

The SystemX Business Management Platform is an all in one, cloud based platform that serves as the backbone and the brain function of all businesses. All modules combined can give business owners, project and operations managers all the tools to manage projects, time sheets, orders, invoices, and document signing in one easy to manage system and keep all personnel in an organization connected.

ASSEMBLING PROJECT TEAMS

Projects, no matter the size and scope, are complex. If they weren’t, they might as well just be tasks on a to-do list. Luckily, projects are also a group effort—for every project, there is a project team working together to make deliverables a reality.

How do these teams come together? Not on their own! There are many ways to form project teams and many factors to take into account.

What Is a Project Team?

A project team is composed of individuals that are working together towards a common goal. This can include executives, a project manager, team leaders from different departments and team members. How this team operates depends on how it’s organized, which can take the form of different project organizational structures.

Within a typical project team structure, projects are headed by the project manager, though they also can be led by an executive that the project manager reports to. The key characteristic of this type of team is that everyone reports to the project manager or another individual at the top of the chain of command.

The project manager often manages the project, the team and all the related tasks in a project management software. Ideally, project management software allows for team collaboration as well as planning, so teams can be at there best.

Three Key Steps to Create a Project Team

As we said, assembling a project team will look different depending on the project and organizational structure. That in mind, here are a few universally helpful details to focus on when putting together your team.

Consider Interdepartmental Needs: Lots of projects require multiple departments to work together to achieve deliverables. Within the project team structure, each involved department should be headed by a leader who manages a team of individuals in their department. So, before getting into the nitty gritty of assembling the team, decide which departments to involve and who will lead them.
Create Communication Practices: Because the project team structure does involve so many tiers of individuals, it’s extremely important to keep communication fluid. Otherwise, the team will begin to feel like multiple, independent departments working toward different goals. The best way to prevent this from happening is by setting a cadence for meetings, requiring status reports, scheduling interdepartmental collaboration time and any number of other ideas.
Clearly Define Expectations: The best way to set communication up for success and keep the entire project running smoothly is by clearly defining expectations. The most successful projects are led by project managers who lay down ground rules and define expectations from the get-go. These rules can also include clear boundaries, what steps to take if something goes wrong and more. We recommend going so far as to put these things in writing and keeping the document somewhere the whole team can reference.

How to Map Team Member Skills for Assignments

Now that you’ve laid the foundation of your project team structure and assembled the team, it’s time to start giving assignments. But, before you do so, it’s extremely advantageous to assess who has the skills to best take on certain assignments. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and playing to a team member’s strengths can majorly improve results.

In order to learn which team members are the best fit for assignments, a project manager or team leader needs to take stock of everyone’s experience and specialties. This is done by creating a skills matrix.

What Is a Skills Matrix?

A skills matrix is a table used to quantify and illustrate each team member’s skills, experience and interest level. The project manager and/or team leader must first gauge a team member’s interest in a certain assignment. This interest is then compared to their skills. Then, this comparison is added to a table comparing the skills and interests of all team members.

To make an accurate matrix, you must create a scale to “score” individuals. When these scores are all displayed in one table, it is simpler to make objective decisions that are best for the project. It is also an excellent opportunity to take note of an individual’s interests vs. their experience, and perhaps give them more opportunities in the future.

young people group in modern office have team meeting and brainstorming while working on laptop and drinking coffee

Benefits of a Project Team Structure

When a project team is structured in a top-down way, everyone knows exactly who to report to, whether it be to ask questions, get approval, present results or anything else. There is zero confusion on which team members to collaborate with.

Another benefit of a project team structure is that it is entirely driven by the needs of the project. Different projects have different demands. This type of organizational structure is custom-tailored to these demands. Now, that isn’t to say a project team structure is always the right choice. There are potential pitfalls to be aware of.

Pitfalls of a Project Team Structure

Above we discussed how project team structures are determined by the needs of the specific project. While this can be a great thing, it can also result in waste. How? At the beginning of each new project, a new project team structure must be created, rather than reusing a structure from previous projects.

Another pitfall to be aware of is the potential for the entire team to become disjointed. If the project manager isn’t careful, communication between leaders can fall apart. When this happens, collaboration comes to a screeching halt, and team members start stepping on each other’s toes.

How to Improve Team Collaboration

Improving team collaboration is easier said than done, and assuming that perfect collaboration happens all on its own is a big mistake. Successful team collaboration is the culmination of thoughtful strategies and adapting to challenges. If you’re asking yourself where to start, consider these three tips.

Choose the Right Type of Project Organizational Structure: We’ve talked about the inner workings and benefits of a project team structure, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for every team or project. In fact, if collaboration becomes a big issue, it may be time to take a step back and consider restructuring. There is no “golden” organizational structure that works perfectly, one hundred percent of the time.
Create a Communication Plan: One of the first steps toward improving collaboration is getting everyone on the same page. Within a project team structure, this means making sure different teams all have the same information to work with and know exactly how to communicate with one another to ask questions, express ideas, etc. When this is the case, and the project is made up of various teams and team leaders, a plan for communication lets everyone know exactly how to work together.
Choose Smart Team Management Solutions: Teams are growing every day, but that doesn’t mean we all go to the same office. Team management tools wre created to empower the modern team—made up of individuals in different departments, or even different time zones. Because of this evolution, we need technology that makes collaboration and communication easier than ever. Team management tools create a digital space for everyone to collaborate and see what others are working on.

SYSTEMX BUSINESS MANAGEMENT PLATFFORM Makes your Project Team Better

SystemX offers the smartest team management solutions around, connecting everyone on the team, improving collaboration and cutting down on confusion. Every aspect of our project management software was built with project teams in mind, and we’ve made it easy to collaborate on any and everything you need, like tasks, Gantt charts and more.

Need to know the right person to ask a question? Use the Team page to see what everyone on your team is working on and who might have the answer. And when you’re building a new team for a project, see a roster or individuals broken down into departments or filter individuals by certain skills.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TIMESHEET COMPLIANCE

Assuming you want your business to be profitable, if your product is predominantly people, in that you’re delivering a service or project, it is the same people that are your profit margin. Therefore, how you measure billable time is of utmost importance; do it poorly and risk damaging your profit margin, alienating customers and creating a despondent workforce.

Beyond this any business whereby utilization is a primary metric, whether or not for forecasting deliverables or implementing them, you’ll likely be reliant on the employee themselves to accurately record their time, likely in the form of TIMESHEETS!

But, and we’re not pointing fingers here, employees tend to not like them making it problematic to the following departments:

finance for tracking profit/margin or accurate invoicing
pre-sales for precise demand forecasting
delivery for not having enough hours to implement
customer success for having to deal with unhappy, overbilled customers
project managers for over-serviced clients and wasted hours

WHAT IS TIMESHEET COMPLIANCE?

Stage one is understanding this question. Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Do ya timesheets! Beyond that timesheet compliance is about filling it in accurately and correctly; often these are to a set of standards that are predetermined at the company level, to establish what is pertinent to them, or on an industry level, so there is affinity to project types. This means projects are tracked effectively and forecasting is consistent and accurate, but also people get paid accurately.

WHY DO PEOPLE CARE?

For the employee it might not be that simple though. Yes there are rules to follow but as a PM you have work to do and a poor memory for the hours you’ve worked. This can cost your business for the following reasons (nicely they all turned out to be P’s):

Profit: if your employees are mis-reporting it’ll likely lead to inaccurate forecasting and this could be in either direction - over or under. Clients getting overcharged, or mis-charged in line with sales promises (sometimes referred to as the value-promise gap) often results in poor customer success, churn and no repeat business; this is only further exacerbated as you then provide correctional work for free. It can also create issues with starting on time when the volume of time required is mis-forecast, further hitting your bottom line.
Pay: on the flip side, undercharging clients might mean your employees are getting the short end of the stick, especially if there is variance in billable rates due to differing types of work or if you offshore your resources. You want to be accurate for both internal and external reasons.
Projections: your forecast’s accuracy is dependant on historical data and if timesheet compliance is low you’ll likely be mis-judgeing how long work should taking in actuality; this can impact in a variety of ways from losing clients at the bid stage as your competitors were able to provide more realistic timelines and SOWs, or it can impact success later with work not aligning to the SOW at each milestone. Timesheets are essential to the concept of good resourcing and beyond - under or over budgeting time can kill a profit margin.
Performance: all of the above puts a customer relationship at risk but also can damage your employee satisfaction, which exacerbates the former. Using timesheets effectively means you can track the important moving parts of a project and your business overall as it can highlight these risks, for example, burnout, underperformance, unprofitable work, client engagement and (un)fulfilled promises.

THE SOLUTION

The SystemX Time Sheets Module in our Business Management Platform. You don’t have to buy the full platform license, and instead just use our time sheet module integrated you’re your accounting software to record billable hours by employees, and project based consulting.

Timesheet tools are commonplace and there are a variety of options to choose, but if service delivery is your world then you should look at our Time Sheets module. Click here to book a 15 minute no obligation demo with us.

The best systems should easily accommodate flexible working practices like part time workers or those who have less hours a day in comparison to a colleague, so that you can truly see the cost and capacity based on individuals as opposed to blended data. If you want to be able to make business decisions based on data, the data has to be accurate and automation can create a more accurate picture of work with the added bonus that employees don’t have to spend hours on doing the thing they hate the most...timesheets!