Timeboxing for Productivity

As practitioners of Scrum, we understand timeboxing. All of the ceremonies of Scrum have time limits that serve to increase throughput. Without the time limits, a team could spend days instead of a few hours planning a Sprint or conducting a Retrospective. And in today’s increasingly distracted world, timeboxing might be the single most important thing you can do to increase your personal productivity.

You may be familiar with the Pomodoro technique, which calls for 25 minute intervals of time dedicated to completing a given task, followed by a five minute break. But my observation and personal experience suggests that even 25 minutes could be a difficult stretch to work without being interrupted by yourself or others. When I say by yourself, I mean the anxiety to grab your phone or look at social media after withdrawal symptoms set in, which is only about two minutes. By others, I mean that Teams or Slack message that comes in that must be answered now, because that is the expectation, and to not answer it makes you look like a slacker.

So I’m proposing a modified version of the Pomodoro technique. Start with just 10 minutes of uninterrupted time to work on a goal. That may be a luxury for some. Truly commit to it by not giving yourself access to your own distractions, and realize that on average, someone messaging you will only need to wait five minutes for a response. Once you experience the joy of output from just 10 minutes increase it to 15 minutes. And I’m not even suggesting that you repeat this throughout the day. If I get a 30 uninterrupted minutes in a day, my productivity skyrockets, I make fewer mistakes and just feel better about getting things done.

I’d love to hear about your techniques for reducing distractions. Please share them in the comments below.