Global Leadership Hub

In today's fast-paced world, staying on top of your tasks and maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be challenging. I remember a time when my to-do list seemed endless, and I constantly felt overwhelmed. Despite my best efforts, tasks would linger for days, weeks, or even months, and my productivity suffered. It was during this period that I discovered timeboxing, a game-changing approach that transformed how I manage my time and tasks.

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Leonard Bernstein

Many professionals rely on to-do lists to manage their workload, but these lists often fall short. According to a Harvard Business Review article by Daniel Markovitz, ‘To-Do Lists Don’t Work’. Instead, consider an alternative approach known as Timeboxing, which merges your priorities and calendar, providing you with a more effective way to manage your time and tasks.

Why to-do lists fall short

To-do lists can be problematic for several reasons:

• Potential value violation – Have you ever noticed lingering tasks on your to-do list that seem to resist completion? Sometimes for days, weeks, months, even years? These items may no longer align with your current priorities or values. Upon closer examination, you might realise that you consider them a waste of time, or you don’t support the action. However, they remain on your list because you may not want to deal with the action of deleting or delegating them.
• The paradox of choice – Research has shown that our brains can only handle about seven options before we’re overwhelmed. It’s easier for us to make decisions and act when there are fewer choices from which to choose. Looking at the 58 items on your to-do list will either paralyse you or send you into default mode: checking email for an hour instead of doing real work.
• Mixed complexity - When your list contains some tasks that are three minutes long and some that are 33 minutes, you’ll invariably focus on the shorter one for the psychological payoff and dopamine release that comes from crossing an item off your list. That means some of those tasks — proofreading the 135 pages of the new employee benefits handbook — will wait for a long, long time.
• Mixed priority - When your list comprises items of varying priorities, you tend to take care of the “A” (urgent) priorities and ignore the “C” (important) priorities…until it becomes an “A” priority itself. But would you rather take care of your car maintenance when it’s a “C” priority, or when it’s an “A” priority: when your car breaks down at 3 am, 250 km from home?
• Lack of context - To-do lists don’t provide sufficient context for the tasks to help you determine what you should work on. All tasks look the same on paper — three or four words on a line doesn’t capture or display the vital bits of information you need: how long will each task take? And the result: how much time do you have available? If you can’t answer these questions, you can’t intelligently decide what you should be working on.

The solution: Timeboxing

Timeboxing offers a structured alternative to to-do lists, helping you to manage your time more effectively. Here’s how you can implement timeboxing to boost productivity and achieve your goals:

1 | Brain dump ideas to move towards your vision and purpose

Start by brainstorming ideas that align with your or your organisation’s vision and purpose. Ask yourself: What are the Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) that I must accomplish to move closer to fulfilling my vision and purpose?