It is no secret that Elon Musk has
an insane work schedule working more than
double the hours of the
average full-time worker.
- And you know now I'm
kinda in the 80 to 90,
which is more manageable
but you know that if you divide
that by two it's only like
you know maybe 45 hours per
company which is not much
if your world has a
lot of things going on.
- [Interviewer] You're like a slacker.
- (laughs) Yeah.
- And that time is split
between many different projects,
most of it goes to his main
companies Tesla, and Space X.
But he also spends time on
things like The Boring Company,
and open AI and of course
making flamethrowers.
Add to that the fact that
according to Ashlee
Vance's biography on him,
he spends four days a week
with his five children.
And you've got what his
possibly one of the busiest
and most hectic daily schedules
of anybody on this planet.
Now in contrast to the video
that I did about Ben Franklin
just a few months ago with Elon
Musk we don't have a source
that gives us a super granular
look at his daily schedule
other than a few tidbits that
he's revealed in interviews
such as the fact that he
spends about 80% of his time on
design and engineering despite
what most people might think.
- I think most people think I must spend
a lot of time with media
or on business-y things
but almost all of my time- like 80% of it
is spent on engineering and design.
- But what we do know
about is the method that
he uses to keep his schedule organized
and to plan out his day.
Musk actually plans out his
day in five minute increments,
and has everything pre-planned in advance.
This is a technique called time boxing,
and it's actually used
by lots of other people
including Bill Gates and Cal Newport.
Though Cal calls it time blocking.
Essentially time boxing or time blocking
if you want to call it
that or heck: time bloxing,
I'm not gonna stop ya,
is the practice of setting
fixed amount of time
for each task that you have to do
and integrating those blocks of time
into your daily schedule.
I use this technique
a lot with my own work
and because people like Musk,
Bill Gates, and Cal Newport,
and many others find it so useful,
today I wanted to break down exactly
how you can use time boxing
most effectively in your own work.
So let's start with the obvious question,
why use this technique?
Why time box your schedule?
And I know there's going to
be critics of this technique
right off the bat who are going to say
scheduling your entire day in advance
basically makes you a robot, dude,
why would you wanna do that?
And I gotta say, number one,
you humans- I mean we humans
really give robots a bad rap
sometimes but number two this
is kinda looking at it
from the wrong perspective.
Yes, scheduling your day in
advance does mean that you're
gonna be adhering to a predetermined plan
and that you're gonna have
less unstructured free time
but as you might know,
unstructured free time can
sometimes be bad thing.
As Parkinson's Law states,
work tends to expand to fill
the time allotted for it.
So essentially time boxing
creates a useful limitation
that can actually make
you more productive.
First and foremost it
takes a lot of the choice
out of the moment of what
you're gonna work on because
you are adhering to a plan so
you spend less time figuring
out what you're gonna
do in the first place
and number two because you
have a limited amount of time
you aren't going to waste it.
You're gonna be focusing
a lot more intently.
And in the case of people
like Musk and Bill Gates,
they probably need to use this technique.
They've got so many commitments,
so many balls in the air,
that without pre-planning their schedule,
and keeping it really really organized,
things are bound to
slip through the cracks.
Okay so if I've got you
convinced lets talk about
how to use time boxing and
the simplest way to do it
is the way that I like
to do it when I write out
my daily plan either on my white board
or on a piece of notebook paper
and I just estimate the amount of time
each task is going to take
so I don't actually put it
on a calendar and give it start
and stop times of the day.
I just say this is going
to take me twenty minutes
and then I'm going to
move on to the next thing.
If you're somebody like
me who doesn't have
a whole lot of scheduled
fixed commitments that start
and stop at specific
times then that can work
really really well and
it might also work if
you're in school or you're an employee
and you have like specific
block of time when
you already know you're
gonna be doing things
and then you have like
another block of time
that's kinda freed up.
And if this method does work well for you,
you don't have to do it on paper because
there is an app called 30/30 on the iPhone
that I have used several times before.
Now I gotta say that I really don't like
the design of this app.
the font they chose in
this app is kinda terrible,
but it is one of the few
apps that lets you set
a specific time you're
going to work on a task
and then kinda like
build a little itinerary
of timed tasks that
you can then go through
and I used to use this a lot in college
when I had a lot of homework
assignments to get through.
Now if you are on Android
I don't believe 30/30
is on the Android platform
but there is an app out
there called Do Now.
It seems to have a similar function.
Now if you are the kinda
person that has a schedule
with lots of predetermined
commitments already
and have gaps in between
them or you just wanna have
more structure in your
life then you actually
might find it useful to use a
calendar for your timeboxing.
To set specific start and
stop times for your tasks.
This is the way that Cal
Newport says he does it
in his blog post on the subject.
And you're a student that
has a lot of little gaps
of time in between classes,
I think this is the way to go for you.
Either way if you're going
to use this technique
successfully then the number
one thing you're gonna need
to learn how to do is properly
estimate how long tasks
are going to take you to complete
and the bad news is that you
and me both are human beings.
We both like ingesting organic matter,
we both like using our respiratory systems
to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide
and we are both naturally
bad at estimating
how long things are going to take.
Did I mention I'm not a robot?
We're all susceptible to what's
called the planning falacy
which describes how human beings tend to
make over optimistic
predictions for how long things
are going to take.
Now there's actually some research done at
the University of Waterloo
in Canada on this phenomenon.
Students were asked to make two different
types of time predictions.
One was a best case
scenario prediction where
literally everything went right
and the other one was for
the average case scenario,
your average every day
run of the mill experience
and the researchers found that
predictions for both types
of scenarios were virtually identical
which showed them that
human beings tend to picture
the best case scenario where
literally nothing goes wrong
when they're trying to
predict what's gonna happen
in an average everyday case.
So even though you know in
the back of your head that
when you try to get to
work on an average day
there's traffic or somebody's
driving in front of you
really slow on their phone,
there's a grandma in front of you.
When you predict how long
it's going to take to work,
you picture the scenario where
there's barely any traffic
at all and everything is just perfect.
And this cognitive bug
is not very congruent
with the successful time
boxing because if you tend
to make super over optimistic
predictions for how long
each task is going to take
then you are going to end up
getting less than half of what you plan
to get done actually done.
So one way to get better at estimating
how long your tasks are
actually going to take
is to track your time.
The app that I personally use
for this is called Toggle.
Which is available both on
computers and mobile devices,
and essentially you just tell
it what you're going to do,
you can give it a tag if you want
and then you start it and
stop it once you're done.
I found that if you track your
time with an app like this
then over time you start to
get a record of how long things
actually take and you can start
to see what the discrepancy
is between your original
estimations and the actual data.
From there you can sorta
start calibrating your brain
and make better estimations.
Also when you're sitting
down to plan your day
and you're estimating how
long it's going to take,
it's gonna be really helpful if you split
your bigger tasks into smaller sub-tasks.
Not only will this make your
task list more action oriented
and clear but it's also
going to help you with
your estimations because it
is always easier to estimate
how long a small well defined
task is going to take.
Alright so now we have to
deal with what is possibly
the most legitimate objection
to time boxing which is,
how do you deal with interruptions?
How do you deal with things
that you couldn't plan for,
- [Tom] or things that just
pop up and interrupt your work?
- Tom, the secret service wants you again.
- (sighs) Again?
- Well as Dwight D. Eisenhower once said
"planning is everything,
plans are nothing."
So when your plans get
interrupted, revise that plan.
Cal Newport's time blocking
blog post actually provides
a great example of how to do this.
He splits his notebook paper into columns
and uses the first column
as his original plan.
Then if plans change or if
something gets interrupted
during the course of the
day he just revises the plan
in the next column and then
continues on from there.
He also advises designating
certain blocks of time
as what he calls reactionary time.
Blocks of time that are
literally setup for dealing
with those things that come
up during the course of
the day that you didn't plan for.
Now sometimes things are going
to pop up that you have to
deal with right now and they
might be in a time block
that was planned for something else
and in those cases you're
going to have to roll with
the punches but if something
comes up that you can
deal with later then a
reactionary time block
is the perfect time to take care of it.
One thing that I would add
here is don't be discouraged
if you're unable to follow
your plan to the letter.
Life is inherently unpredictable sometimes
but that doesn't mean
that planning out your day
is a flawed tactic.
No tactic works 100% of the time.
Just do your best to adapt
and then at the end of the day
analyze your plan and see
if what interrupted it
was something that you need
to account for in the future
or if it was just a one time thing.
And that brings me to my
last but most crucial piece
of advice for using this
technique effectively.
Avoid the temptation to
over schedule your day.
Yes, Elon Musk is putting
in 80-90 hour work weeks,
juggling a zillion things at once
but number one that dude is a monster
and number two if you have
difficult work on your plate
that requires a lot of intense
concentration and creativity
sometimes that's all you
can do in a given day.
Don't try to squeeze work like that into
a tiny sliver of time in a day
that's already taken up
with errands and admin work.
As the authors of the book
The Four Disciplines of
Execution pointed out
the more you try to do the
less you actually accomplish.
So take advantage of the
productivity benefits
that come from the
limitations of time boxing
but give that difficult creative
work the space it deserves
and save that mentally easier work
for a concentrated batch day.
And while we're talking about
that more cognitively trivial
admin work if you do want
to make that more efficient
then one thing you might
want to try is Audible
which is the world's
best place to download
and listen to audiobooks.
Audiobooks are a big part of my life
and they're a great way
to be more efficient
with your time since you
can listen to them while
you're at the gym or while
you're commuting to school
or work or while you're cooking
while you're doing laundry.
Basically any time you're
doing something that
doesn't require a whole
lot of attention in itself.
Audible has an unmatched library
of audiobooks ranging from
the best sellers to lots
of obscure titles so
you're gonna be able to
find and listen to basically
anything that's on your reading list.
The membership comes with
credit for one free audiobook
every single month and
unused credits roll over
from month to month.
Also if you don't like a
book you can exchange it
with no questions asked and
if you do happen to cancel
all the audiobooks you've downloaded
are yours to keep forever.
So if this sounds good to you,
you can get a 30 day free
trial of their service
along with a free audiobook
download of your choosing
by heading over to Audible.com/Thomas
or by texting Thomas to
500-500 on your phone.
This month I'm gonna recommend
one of my absolute
favorite books of all time
which is Bill Bryson's A Short
History of Nearly Everything,
which I own in print and as an audiobook.
This is the book that really
did the most to rekindle
my interest in science and
I also expanded my appetite
for learning in different areas,
and beyond that motivational
aspect this is really just
one of the best and most
entertaining overviews
of science that I've ever come across
and I think that anyone who
wants to be more well rounded
should definitely experience it.
So if you wanna start listening
to that book or any other
audiobook of your choosing
once again head on over to
Audible.com/Thomas or text
Thomas to 500-500 on your phone
to start that free trial
and get your free audiobook download.
Big thanks to Audible
for sponsoring this video
and helping to support this
channel and as always guys
thank you so much for watching.
If you don't wanna miss future videos
definitely get subscribed right there
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grades right over there.
You might also want to check
out our latest podcast episode
right here which is all about
how to become a tea drinker
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addicts should probably learn
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Thanks for watching and
I'll see you next week.
