In my previous comment, when I said that I committed to time boxes instead of tasks, that was only partially true. If I have a task with a far away deadline, then I will commit to time boxes only. If I have a pressing deadline, I commit to both the task and the time boxes.
If the time boxes are not enough for completing the task, I go on with the task until I finish it.

Note that there’s no substitute for estimating the task, but blocking your time with a certain number of time boxes will help you not to overschedule your day (time boxes make excellent estimation/work units).

Does that make sense?

If you have only important but not-so-urgent things in your list, then that’s fine. But what if you have to meet deadlines? Of course you could dedicate 2 hours for an article, but what if you can’t finish it in 2 hours, you need more time?

I am afraid that combination of these two concepts can be misleading: if I commit to just working for a certain number of hours without actually finishing some important tasks, I would definitely feel better. But my editors would be very disappointed if instead of job done I will send them reports of how many time I spent working for them:-)

Could you give us some more detailed explanations about how to combine time boxing and closed to-do lists?

In a nutshell, instead of committing to hard-to-estimate tasks, I commit to a certain number of “time boxes“ (fixed units of time doing a certain kind of work). Using time budgeting (and hence time boxing) works very well for me and is something that I recommend to everyone.

I’m not aware of how you prioritize, but I just found a new product that I immediately signed up to beta test when another Director sent me this link… what a powerful, yet simple way to confidently prioritize. It is based on MCDA.

http://go.catalyst.com/?linkid=8034156

Cheers,

Howard Fine
Director of IT

Thanks

Nick Grimshawe

Interview with Mark Forster, one of the foremost thinkers in the field of time management. He is the author of three books on time management, including the innovative (and intriguing) Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management.

Unlike many o…

Being a freelance writer and editor, I always have problems with my to-do list. First, because of the number of activities I’m involved, secondly, because the work always comes unexpected and unplanned. The GTD-approach does not really work for freelancers with regard of to-do lists – I don’t need a list of all the possible actions that I might accomplish today, I need a list of things I must do today. Therefore, Mark Forster’s “Will-do” approach is much more useful and reliable.

However, I find that it is really hard for me to plan the right amount of work for a day: either I make the list too short and it is done in no time at all, or it takes not one, but 3-4 days to accomplish things. Partly it is due to my planning skills, but also there is a more general problem: in most cases we don’t really know how much time a certain task needs. Writing a good blog post can take an hour – or 5 hours. If you have other plans, you get nervous because you can’t leave the task unfinished, but yet there are other very important things for you to do.

I wonder if Mark Forster gives some advice about the clever time-estimation (which would result in clever Will-Do list).

Thank you very much.