206. Time Boxing For Faster Studying

A practical guide to using the time boxing time management strategy to boost focus, sharpen your prioritisation, overcome prioritisation, mitigate perfectionism and ultimately get your work done faster. 

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Hosted by William Wadsworth, memory psychologist, independent researcher and study skills coach. I help ambitious students to study smarter, not harder, so they can ace their exams with less work and less stress.

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Chapters

• 0:01 Series Recap And Today’s Focus
• 0:23 What Time Boxing Is
• 1:05 Planning With Real Clock Times
• 1:47 Why Time Limits Work
• 2:35 Procrastination, Focus, And Efficiency
• 3:13 When Tight Limits Are A Good Fit
• 4:00 When To Loosen Or Skip Time Boxing
• 4:18 Research On Deadlines And Creativity
• 5:11 Choosing The Right Approach For The Task
• 5:40 Personal And Teacher Case Studies
• 7:01 Make Time Boxing Part Of Your Toolkit
• 7:20 Upcoming Episodes And Guest Preview
• 9:25 Thanks And Study Resources CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Exam Study Expert Podcast and to the second installment in a three-part mini-series on how to get your study tasks done faster. In part one of this three-part series, back in episode 204, we talked about the surprising power of how having a better to-do list can actually help you get your work done faster. Today, in part two, I want to take a look at how setting limits on the time you're allowing for your study tasks can help you get through them in record time. I had meant to get this episode out last week, but I have not been too well. You might still be able to hear a bit of that in my voice. So I'm going to try and keep it short and sweet for today, which, if anything, does fit quite well with today's theme. So I was originally taught this as a time management technique called time boxing. The idea with time boxing is relatively simple. You write out your task list in order of attack, as we did back in episode 204, then you effectively fill in a timetable for your to-do list next to each item. I find this works best when you add in the actual times per the clock, not just the duration of the task. It then saves you kind of having to translate your plan onto the clock as you go. So rather than writing, I'm going to allow 30 minutes for the first task, an hour for the second, 10 minutes for the second for the third task, and so on, you would instead write 6 to 6.30 for task one, 6.30 to 7.30 for task two, 7.30 to 7.40 for task three. Then you can easily keep an eye on where you're at in your plan as you work through your evening. When it's 7.15, you know you're on the final 15 minutes of task two, for example. So why does time boxing work? Why does restricting the amount of time we allow for tasks help us get through them faster? The wisdom behind this is not anything new. Many of you may be familiar with the age-old Parkinson's law, which is often stated as work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. And it was originally from a piece by naval historian Cyril Parkinson for The Economist. The mechanism by which time boxing or kind of restricting the time available for tasks, uh by which this actually works to help us get them done faster, more efficiently, the mechanism varies a little bit. So it can be about a reduced tendency to procrastinate or reduced tendency to get distracted. In other words, helping you stay fixed on your task for a greater proportion of the available time rather than wasting it being procrastinating on procrastination activities or getting distracted and off-task. It can also be about kind of a sense of forced efficiency. So you have to be sharper about the way you prioritize your efforts, reducing the time you spend on tangents or lower value parts of the task, and shutting down our opportunity for perfectionism or completionist tendencies, forcing you to settle for something that's good enough, if not completely polished to the nth degree of perfection. Tight time boxing, so being particularly sort of closely tightly restricted with the amount of time you give yourself, that tends to be a good approach when you're already fairly confident with the kind of task you have to do. So it's it's it's for example a a broadly doable set of problem sheets to get done or or a set of readings to complete. And you know, you've done this sort of thing before. It's it's you know, you may have to think about it a little bit, but it's not going to like be the most incredibly difficult thing you've ever had to tackle. You know, and this allows you to, this sort of familiarity with the kind of task allows you to be relatively accurate in predicting how long it should take. And also that time restriction will then serve as helpful guardrails to help keep you on track and help get you done, get get the task, help help you get the task done efficiently. On the other hand, if the task is something very new or very creative, and it's going to demand some original thinking, or or it's or it's very challenging, it's just simply really, really difficult stuff. You might want to be more generous with your time boxing, or perhaps consider not using the strategy at all. Psychologists uh Brian and Locke, in a classic 1967 study, found that loggers log faster, um, chop down more trees when given tighter time deadlines and incentive for meeting them. On the other hand, Berkeley researchers, Moore and Tenny, noted in a more recent 2012 piece that when we comes to more cognitively demanding or creative or innovative tasks, um, doing too much time pressure places constraints, as they put it, on the capacity for thought and action that limit exploration and increase reliance on well-learned or heuristic strategies. Translation, you're less likely come up with something new or groundbreaking, you less likely make a huge leap in your skill set, for example, as a writer, when you time box, for those kind of big innovative jumps or big leaps in your sort of level of skill for a certain kind of thing, it we often benefit from less time pressure and the freedom that comes with that to experiment and take risks. There's a time for that. But as scholars, there's also a time for just bashing out a more standard and routine set of study tasks on a day-to-day basis. So there's a key point here about awareness of the kind of work you're working on. Is it very challenging? Is it very creative, in which case time boxing perhaps not might not be the fit, or is it perhaps a little bit more routine, uh a little bit more within your comfort zone, in which case uh turning on the time boxing might help us get through it uh more efficiently and save ourselves some time in the process. So, um personally, I turn to time boxing on my most high-pressure days. Those days when you look at your to-do list and you just think, oh my gosh, how on earth am I going to get through all of this uh in in the time I need to today? Uh I do the time boxing exercise and I find some sense of peace when I've done that because I know that there is a plan to get it done. I just need to be disciplined at each step of the way. Um my wife, on the other hand, she spent many years as a French teacher, uh, and teachers almost never have the luxury of enough time to spend on all the things that they want to do, as I'm sure my teachers that listen to the podcast know all too well. Um, so my my wife used time boxing extensively as probably the main productivity tool I saw her use. Um and she could easily spend, she could have easily chosen to spend, you know, maybe two hours on a given lesson plan for an upcoming class, given unlimited time. She simply didn't have the luxury of allowing herself that much time for every single task. She just wouldn't have fitted in the time available. Um so she'd time box, she'd give herself, say, 40 minutes to get that lesson plan done. She'd focus hard, she'd find a way to make it happen, and it happened. It might not have been uh the you know the absolutely sort of perfect, glowing, you know, fizzies and whizzes kind of lesson plan that if she'd had two hours to spend on it, but it was good, and she was a good teacher, uh, and she did a really good plan in the 40 minutes uh and and and it led to a great lesson. So, time boxing, think of this as a useful tool to have in your arsenal, whether you choose to use it as a daily tool to sharpen your work rate and get things done in time and get things done a little bit faster, or whether it's something you you dip into from time to time, uh perhaps as I do when you're facing a big time crunch. So give it a spin, and as ever, let me know your thoughts, feedback, queries, and questions down in the comments section uh wherein platforms that support such a thing, for example, Spotify or YouTube. That'll do it for today though. Um the plan, just to look ahead a few weeks a little bit, uh the plan to take us through to Christmas uh is uh next week we're gonna be having a lovely conversation on confidence with my friend and confidence coach uh Scott Hardiman. That's a really nice episode. I think you'll really enjoy that. Um, followed by uh the week after that, we'll have the third and final installment of this little how to study faster series uh that we've been uh we've been working on over the past uh couple of solo episodes. Um the week beyond that, which will be our final week before Christmas, um I've got a particular treat for you. Uh a very special guest who's new to exam study experts. I think you're gonna love that one. Uh, should make for perfect holiday season listening uh to pop on in the car, something really, uh, really kind of fascinating and probably quite a fresh bit of science that's that is quite new to many of you already get your mind spinning with all the kind of practical implications. I think I think that'll be a really interesting one. Uh pop up pop it on in the car if you're traveling to visit family over the holiday season, perhaps. Uh, and I'll be sharing more about that, of course, uh a little bit nearer the time in a couple of weeks. Looking even further ahead to 2026, um, as I've been mentioning once or twice over recent months, uh, I've I've been hard at work uh building up a really great run of episodes for us for um the pretty much we've pretty much got the first half of 2026 uh more or less in the bag now. We've got interviews recorded that I think that takes us out to around May time or so uh on the broadcast schedule. So we're well on top of things uh and in really great shape to bring you a really first rate and very well structured season uh of top-notch episodes to inform, inspire, and help you study smarter. So stick around, tell your friends, there's lots of great stuff coming your way. As always, I just wanted to take a second to say thank you so much for tuning in today. Uh, particularly thank a particular thanks to those who support the show on Patreon and looking forward to seeing you again soon.

SPEAKER_00: 9:25

If you've got exams coming up, you can now get all of William's favourite tips and tricks to save you time and get you higher grades all in one handy cheat sheet. Grab your coffee at examstudiexpert.com slash free tips. Thanks again for listening and see you soon.