Charles Herring 1 June 2023
Time-boxing

We live in a time where technology is relentlessly fighting for our attention. Texts, chats, social media posts, phone calls, email flow into our lives at a constant trickle. I got so sick of it that I decided to wrestle control away from my tools and reclaim my position as Captain of my tasks, attention and time.

I've adopted a "time-boxing" approach to work. It consists of a 45-minute, timed "micro-sprint" to start, continue or complete tasks and some shorter planning windows and a couple of recovery/breather periods. This approach has maximized my efficiency, improved my mental health and reduced my daily anxiety. I'm getting more done and liking the process more. I've summarized what I do in the slides below. I hope it's helpful and would love to hear what you do to filter out noise and create spaces of calm and focus.

Efficiency and Health HackPart 1: tImerPart 2: Todo ListPart 3: NotebookRecovery MenuScary SetupSprint Cycle ProcessCheck-inAssignmentBreatherMicro-sprintFinal Notes

 

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About the Author

Charles Herring

Charles Herring

Co-founder & Chairman, WitFoo

I started WitFoo in 2016 to make information and operations shareable across the craft of cybersecurity — between companies, law enforcement, national security and insurers, who mostly cannot see what each other sees. Before that I was at Lancope and Cisco, and I began in 2002 as Network Security Officer for the Naval Postgraduate School.

I lead research and development on a platform that ingests trillions of messages a day across hundreds of clusters. It is sold as Conductor, Reporter and Analytics, licensed flat per appliance with unlimited data — because a team charged by the gigabyte ends up making coverage decisions on a spreadsheet, months before the incident that needed the logs they dropped.

Everything here is mine, not the company's, and it wanders. Corrections are genuinely welcome — I would rather be right than consistent.

A note on how this was written: I use artificial intelligence tools to help me research, check facts, and edit these posts. The ideas, the arguments, and any mistakes are mine. I read the sources, I check the claims, and I take full responsibility for what I publish here. The views are my own and the writing is my intellectual property.