If you make work a scarcer quantity, you’re more likely to use time wisely and get things done than if it feels like an endless to-do list.And you cand do this by restricting your hours or restricting your workload.

Constraints and productivity

Time Management

<ul><li>Restricting hours: set aside a certain chunk of time for work and don’t work outside of it. For example, the Pomodoro technique for working in short bursts of time.</li><li>Restricting workload: instead of deciding on a set number of hours, you decide on a set number of tasks.&nbsp;</li></ul>

Time vs workload

The biggest advantage of constraining time is that it’s always unambiguous.&nbsp;If you decide to work for three hours and then stop, there’s no confusion there.Disadvantage: time constraints can encourage a sloppier attitude towards work. For example, you might decide to spend all day studying in the library—but without tasks to constrain your productivity, you end up checking your phone.

Constraining time

<ul><li>It’s unclear the time and effort required to complete the task.</li><li>The work itself is ambiguous and may require a lot of trial-and-error.</li><li>The work is continuous and can’t be easily divided into discrete chunks.</li></ul>

When time constraints work best

The advantage of constraining tasks is that it focuses directly on the object of productivity: whatever you’re trying to accomplish: you can't fool yourself into believing you’re working hard but you’re not actually accomplishing much.Disadvantage:&nbsp;tasks can often be ambiguous or hard to predict. If you fail to predict properly you might create to-do lists that are unachievable or those that are trivial.

Constraining tasks

<ul><li>Tasks are discrete and fairly predictable.</li><li>You might be tempted to fill up time without making real progress</li><li>The tasks are frequently repeated, and therefore easier to estimate.</li></ul>

When task constraints work best

I'm a big fan of setting constraints to get work done. If you make work a scarcer quantity, you're more likely to use time wisely and get things done than if it feels like an endless to-do list. There's two key ways you can do this: restrict your hours or restrict your workload.

When task constraints work best

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