Forget the To-Do List. Get More Productive with This Trick.

You know those not-urgent-but-super-important tasks on your to-do list? They likely have sat on your to-do list for, well, an eternity. They’re constantly overshadowed by the urgent-but-not-important tasks as well as whatever easy tasks can get crossed off quickly. Because when we cross things off our to-do lists, well, we feel productive! Yet somehow we’re still behind on life and not achieving our goals. What gives?

Perhaps the issue is the time-old to-do list. Maybe it just doesn’t work the way we want it to, at least that’s what the Harvard Business Review suggests. But thankfully they have a solution, and it’s called time-boxing. It’s essentially migrating your to-do list to your calendar. You calculate how much time you need for a task and then you schedule it into your calendar. Hour by hour. Box by box. Day by day. Week by week.

There are a lot of reasons why this practice will make you more productive. For one, you’ll have a record of your time (no more “Where did the time go?” excuse!). When you plan ahead like this, there’s little chance of majorly missing a big deadline. And we all know that we tend to drag out work to fit within the time that is available to us instead of the time we really need. (Which can be both good and bad!) Giving yourself a limit and a restraint can help you stay focused and dedicate the proper amount of time to our projects.

Interested in learning more? Read about time boxing at the Harvard Business Review.

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