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You wish you had more time. Perhaps you are:

* a student struggling with procrastination and meeting deadlines

* a freelancer juggling multiple clients, jobs, finding new work, developing new skills, chasing invoices

* a remote worker managing all that freedom and all those choices

* a creative, needing to reconcile inspiration and artistic expression with hard deadlines and deliverables

* an athlete, cross-fitter or personal trainer, organizing training schedules and diet plans for yourself and your clients

* a parent, balancing work and family and everything else

* a single parent, fighting a thousand battles, seemingly alone

* a writer suffering from writer's block

* an entrepreneur, trying to make ends meet while getting it all off the ground

* a retiree, with a lot of time, suddenly, and not quite sure how you should use it

* an account manager, not feeling like you're giving any of your clients enough consideration

* someone with the traits of or an official diagnosis of ADHD, struggling with focus and attention.

Though each of us has a distinct background, personality and neurobiology, modernity's recipe of globalization, digitalization and interconnectivity has somewhat bounded and homogenized human experience. We live much the same lives and suffer in similar ways.

We could all use a little guidance. We'd all like reliable access to the best version of ourselves. We'd all like to develop better habits. We'd all like to build on our current ways of working and living rather than invoke wholesale change. We'd all like a simple way to make all this happen.

That's why this book is for you.

The timeboxing stories from around the world here prove that you're not alone and that things can easily get much better. They tell the stories of people from every continent and many walks of life for whom timeboxing has been a source of comfort, productivity and, in many cases, joy. Their stories demonstrate the broad appeal of timeboxing, and I hope some resonate with you.

HOW TO USE THE BOOK

The book comprises four parts:

* PART ONE—BELIEVE is about developing the conviction that timeboxing makes sense for you, that it works and that its benefits are life-changing.

* PART TWO—PLAN helps you choose and create the right timeboxes, usually the night or morning before the day you're timeboxing. It's focused on the crucial 15 minutes that determine the following 15 hours.

* PART THREE—DO is for when you're in the timeboxes themselves, during the actual working, living, often unpredictable day.

* PART FOUR—OWN encourages you to make timeboxing a habit that sticks with you and adapts for you for each third of your life: work, leisure and sleep. This part is intended to ensure that timeboxing works for you over years and decades, not just months.

Timeboxing is a mindset as well as a method. You'll need to recognize the importance of managing time, that you can change your behaviour and that there are many benefits to timeboxing. This is another way of saying that developing a positive attitude and a belief in what you're doing is a crucial part of making timeboxing (and, indeed, any other important behavioural change) stick. PART ONE — BELIEVE will help you effect just such a mindset. Once you're in the right frame of mind, you'll need a simple and clear explanation of what to do, the steps to take. PLAN and DO will show you just such a method. Finally, in OWN, your mindset will evolve from adoption to iteration and the method will become your own as you learn to tailor timeboxing to your precise and ever-changing requirements.