Homemade timeboxing
It’s really interesting how you take your work habits home without even realizing sometimes. But that isn’t always bad. As I am reading more and more about agile and its various procedures and techniques, I find myself unconsciously implementing some while not at work.
I am currently working on my Master’s thesis. I have always found working at home to be very distracting and prone to procrastination, so I had to come up with techniques to keep me going (as I am one lazy bastard). Timeboxing is one such technique. It allows you to move forward and have visible results, thus making you feel good about yourself (big pat on the back). Instead of viewing a certain project as a big “lump”, I try to divide it into more concrete pieces, each smaller in scope and duration.
The process is this:
- Establish a number of hours you would like to work for (for me it’s about 4-5 daily at the moment).
- Break up all your work into small chunks and assign a certain period of time to each. Be careful to be within the timeframe +/- 20%.
- Choose one chunk
- Execute chunk
- Have a little fun (grab a bite, watch a youtube video, run TweetDeck, write blog post)
- If not tired go to 3
House cleaning is very much a similar project. I recommend its execution as practice. :)
