Timeboxing means dividing your day into 15-60 minute slots, based on your priorities, and then sticking to those slots as you dive into the business of work. If that sounds great, it is. If it sounds easy, it isn’t.

In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, author Marc Zao-Sanders joins Ross G to give him advice on timeboxing his life. We discuss:

· The benefits of timeboxing;

· How email is the ‘killer’, and what to do about it;

· The difficulties that Ross had implementing timeboxing, and what he could do differently.

The article Marc wrote for HBR was ‘How timeboxing works and why it will make you more productive’.

Find out more about timeboxing from Mind Tools.

The book, Timeboxing, is available from Penguin.

Marc’s substack is One Thing at a Time.

The company Marc runs is Filtered.

In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross discussed the rising popularity of the ‘dumbphone’.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com/business. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:

· Ross Garner

· Marc Zao-Sanders

As learning designers, we’re ultimately in the business of trying to help people build new connections in their brains. To do this effectively, we need to have a fundamental understanding of how the brain works. But how far down the neuroscience rabbit hole do we need to go?

In this week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Ross Dickie and Ross Garner are joined by Lauren Waldman, learning scientist, consultant, and founder of Learning Pirate. We discuss:

· Lauren’s journey to deepen her understanding of how the brain works;

· how much learning designers need to know about neuroscience to be effective in their roles;

· the cost of L&D’s continual focus on the ‘shiny and the new’.

To find out more about Lauren’s work as Learning Pirate, head to: https://www.learningpirate.com/. You can also view a trailer for Lauren’s ‘Joining Forces with Your Brain’ series here.

In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Ross Garner mentioned the ‘Battle of the Eclipse’.

Ross Dickie recommended the documentary STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces.

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtools.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers:

· Ross Dickie

· Ross Garner

· Lauren Waldman