Screw multitasking, try timeboxing

Should you bother reading this article from me or surf LinkedIn for some other news? Forget everything else, let's timebox the next 30 seconds in reading the below 1 paragraph with the utmost concentration, then you can go ahead and decide.

"I am successfully performing at my exciting day job as an engineer, learning and working on the hottest trend of SDWAN. Also interning with the product management team at my company on a new security initiative. After work hours, I take Stanford courses like the recent one on IoT called 'Product Management for Internet of Things'. Meanwhile, I am also exploring a parallel market opportunity for my company's existing product line. Along with this, I am exploring a virtual reality startup opportunity in India."

If you are still reading this article, I am going to discuss how I have learned to manage multiple tasks but not by multitasking.

It all started when I was researching on my pet project of deploying our current product in a newer market. I would constantly get diverted from my engineering job and wander off thinking about this new market opportunity during work hours, then again get back to some engineering job and again research. Soon I realized that, multitasking was making me unproductive. I was unproductive in my engineering job and I was unproductive in my pet project research. I was disappointed in myself since I was not able to manage both. My mind was way too excited and distracted. I approached one of my mentors about the same and he suggested that I try timeboxing things.

"Set a time, stick to the time, move on!"

I was confused, I told him that it is impossible to move on after researching for an hour. Your mind will think of new test cases for your engineering job when you are researching on your pet project or your mind will wander back to your research when you are doing your engineering job. My mentor's response were very clear. Timebox your work with a set amount of time, you have about 45 hours of work per week, dedicate 10% of your time for research = 4.5 hours/week, rest of the time concentrate on your engineering job. Keep a stop clock if that will help you. But once you are done with the research for a dedicated time, just move on. If at any time other than the timeboxed time, you end up thinking about the research project, start the timer and time yourself for the amount of time you end up thinking about the project. Make sure that you do not spend more than 10% of your time per week/month for this project. Be true to yourself.

Now, I had some motivation. I basically just had 4.5 hours/week or 18 hours/month to research about my pet project. All of a sudden I felt this immense need to be as productive as possible during this 4.5 hours/week. In turn I realized that I had a dedicated amount of time for my day job also.

Here's what ended up working for me after a few hits and misses.

1. MultiTimer app on iPhone: This was a savior. I had 5 stop clocks running. Extensively used the "Work" one which was for an hour each and this helped me channelize my energy into everything.

• Engineering - Office hours
• Product Management - Office hours
• SDWAN pet project - Non-office hours
• Stanford course - Non-office hours
• VR research - Non-office hours

2. Multiple workspaces/desktops : I am not suggesting that we get multiple desktops. That's a distraction. I am suggesting that we can try out a different workspace for each area. For example on MAC you can have multiple workspaces. Have a workspace dedicated to subjects related to the work you are supposed to do during the allocated time frame. This worked wonders for me because even if I opened 10 tabs on python stackoverflow they would all be in my present workspace. The security research tabs were all on a different workspace and hence only python during the present time slot and present workspace made sure I was not distracted.

3. Meetings : Count the time you spend for meetups, meetings and classes also in your time sheet. Take 5 minutes before the meeting to prepare for the meeting, start the timer ON till the meeting ends and you are back to do doing your next task. This way you are motivated to cancel some of the meetings which you need not be a part of, else you end up sitting in meetings where you dont add or gain any value.

The best part about time boxing ?

By timeboxing, I had that sense of urgency to get things done in a limited time. It helped me to be as productive as possible in the little amount of time I had for each task. I felt more hungry to get things done, I had a sense of purpose since I knew I was living my life quarter mile at a time or in this case I was living my life an hour at a time.

I am sure that there are multiple ways in which people handle different projects. CEOs, VPs, executives, managers and many more, who are all capable of multitasking and they cannot sit in an enclosure doing only 1 thing for an hour or half-an-hour. I have myself multi-tasked many a times, because it does let me make progress on multiple projects at the same time.

However, whenever I need something to be executed with utmost concentration I always fallback to

"Set a time, stick to the time, move on!"

Thanks,

Prasanna

(Originally posted on Medium)