I went back and forth about timeboxing after barely touching my L2 for almost the whole summer. Finally one day I just “did it” using the decremental timeboxing, and Khatz, thank you again.

Timeboxing rocks so hard. I’ve been motivated to do my L2 more in one day than I did in a whole month earlier this summer. I was afraid of failing and it kept me from revving up Anki and going through the cards/getting sentences. With timeboxing I always win and am always motivated.

There’s natural pauses in what I do. I check my e-mail between time boxes, I sometimes throw in a Bob Dylan song and… it still works. I use my ipod timer, open up the windows, and just do it. After I finish I am hungry for more. Where before the 30 minute Now Habit would leave me exhausted, with the timeboxing I am always shocked how fast it goes and want more!

A great book to pick up is called Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina. It covers 12 overall facts that we definitely know about the brain, and explains some of the science, history and applications of it. One of my favorite chapters is on long-term memory, and it talks almost entirely about spaced repetition as the only proven consistent method of creating long-term memories. The book also says that we tend to lose focus after about 10 minutes of an activity, like class. Timeboxing alleviates this by zipping around before our brains can get bored.

For anyone on the fence I recommend to just “go for it.” Worst case scenario you have lost 10 or less precious minutes of procrastinating in (likely) L1.

yea that’s what i do too!

I guess there are a million different names for “using timer to focus.” I saw www.pomodorotechnique.com/ pop up on Lifehacker, and all it seems to be is a glorified 25-minute timer (I find it somewhat silly to say “I did five pomodoros today,” whatever floats his boat, I guess). Regardless of what you call it, using timers has been useful for me.

I personally can’t wait for the release of the “Epic Win” app. Using a shallow (But what I believe will be effective) RPG point system to help incentivize good habits has been on my to-do list for a really long time (I downloaded the Dev kit and had a notebook of design documents). Combine the game itself and a timer, create a reward system, I can’t wait!

I thought, wtf, what do I have to lose. I’ll try this nested time boxing action that Khatz talks of. Not only is it much easier to get started on when it’s only two minutes long, I find I’m actually far more productive. There must be a technical term for this, but I’ve noticed the phenomena of decreasing effectiveness/productivity as time spent on a task increases (a inverse relationship, if you will).

Example: working in blocks of 10 minutes my best ever rep completion number was 55 or something for my SRS sentences deck. THE BEST EVER. Usually 40s. Sometimes mid 30s when I was really dragging it.

Nested timeboxing: working mostly with 3 minute boxes I’ve been consistently hitting 16-22 sentences per timebox (that’s freaking 60-73ish average for a 10 minute block).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that nested timeboxing not only gets done but is also more productive in terms of actually work done per minute.

Like Khatz I haven’t been taking “rests” in between mini timeboxes. Rather, I do other things I need to (cleaning, stretching my body, dishes, learning to sing songs in my target language, brushing my teeth). These other forms of “work” have also benefited from timeboxing. Not only do the get done more frequently, but the work completed to time ratio is much higher.

To argue against timeboxing in general and nested timeboxing in particular is nearly always the product of not actually having tested out the methods for oneself. In my humble opinion, that is.

Thanks Khatz for helping me out.

Too bad he doesn’t appear to make an effort to read the stuff he confutes.

Also: “The difference between timeboxing and “just do it” is the difference between abstinence and contraception” <—– this is a great analogy.