{"id":6706,"date":"2017-02-02T08:21:38","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T15:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=6706"},"modified":"2019-03-08T10:17:10","modified_gmt":"2019-03-08T18:17:10","slug":"tasks-or-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/02\/tasks-or-time\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s More Productive: Counting Hours or Tasks Accomplished?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a big fan of setting constraints to get work done. If you make work a scarcer quantity, you\u2019re more likely to use time wisely and get things done than if it feels like an endless to-do list.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s two key ways you can do this: restrict your hours or restrict your workload.<\/p>\n

Restricting hours is fairly simple: set aside a certain chunk of time for work and don\u2019t work outside of it. This is a commonly advocated productivity method, from Cal Newport\u2019s fixed-schedule productivity<\/a> to Pomodoro<\/a>\u2019s for working in short bursts of time.<\/p>\n

Restricting workload changes the equation. Instead of deciding on a set number of hours, you decide on a set number of tasks. You might decide to create a list of tasks for the day and keep working until you can get them finished. It also applies on shorter timescales when you might decide not to work until you get to a particular milestone and then call it quits.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve gone back and forth over using both types of constraints over the years. This suggests to me that neither is a dominant strategy (better in all situations) but that both have their usefulness with different productivity problems.<\/p>\n

When Should You Constrain Time?<\/h2>\n

The biggest advantage of constraining time is that it\u2019s always unambiguous. If you decide to work for three hours and then stop, there\u2019s no confusion there. On the other hand, if you decide to work until you\u2019re finished an essay, there\u2019s the chance that it might be done in twenty minutes or take three weeks.<\/p>\n

This lack of ambiguity means that the constraint rarely fails because you were overly optimistic. It\u2019s a lot easier to predict working a set number of hours than working until you complete a set number of tasks.<\/p>\n

However, I\u2019ve also found time constraints can encourage a sloppier attitude towards work. You might decide to spend all day studying in the library\u2014but without tasks to constrain your productivity, you end up checking your phone or skipping hard problems to work on easier stuff.<\/p>\n

My rule of thumb is that time constraints work best when:<\/p>\n