If you are involved in freelance work, you know that one of the essential tools you must have is a time management tool. And time boxing is just the thing. Whether you’ve been doing freelance jobs for a long time or you are thinking about joining the freelance bandwagon, this technique is the best one you can use to help you organize your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks.
What makes this technique very popular is the ease in which one can use it. There’s no need for lengthy trainings and tutorials; you only need a few minutes to learn the concept and you’ll be able to master it immediately. The idea is putting your tasks in a -box-, and within that box is your time-frame. All you need to do is make a list of all the things you do as a freelancer, and put each task in a box. Your box will represent the time-frame within which you intend to accomplish your task. You just have to think about the tasks and make a rough estimate on how much time you will need to spend on it to finish it. And that’s it. That’s time boxing. It’s really that simple.
After you have learned the basics of the technique, you can then organize your tasks. You can choose to do the important tasks first, the other least important tasks afterwards. Or you can choose to do the tasks that you have allocated the biggest amount of time first and do the rest in decreasing order. Whatever you choose to do, the point is that you are able to focus at one task at a time, which makes it easy for you to progress on your tasks. You get to focus on one task alone per box, so you are able to concentrate more and not get sidetracked by other tasks.
And when you are tackling big projects on your freelance work, time boxing can really help you out, too. This technique can help you break down your big project into smaller and more focused tasks. Instead of getting overwhelmed by the big task and deadlines looming ahead of you, you can concentrate on the smaller tasks required to finish the project. When you’ve broken it down to the core tasks, you will be able to concentrate more and end up doing a lot of progress towards completing the project. This also makes it easier to check your progress on the project, how much you have already accomplished and how much more you need to work on.