Time Box – Lock and Trade
ByThe basic idea of time boxing is that you put a box around a particular block of time on your calendar and mark it for a specific use. Several time management experts recommend this basic core idea. Many students try some form of it but often meet with failure. The hardest thing to deal with is how to keep some flexibility in your schedule but still have some concrete time blocks that you can count on to get your most important things done.
This can be particularly difficult for children and teens. You might think their challenges would be fewer and smaller than those of adults because they have so much of their time dictated by school schedules and time dictated after school activities. The difficulty can come from their unsuccessful efforts to manage the time they can control.
For some children and teens obligations that are not specifically dictated in a time slot simply bear the calendar spot called “LATER” which in child or teen speak can mean “whenever” or just plain ”never”.
To successfully help your child learn to manage this problem you can introduce “Time Box Lock and Trade.” In this simple system you look at the calendar page and ignore all the time dictated items such as school hours and specifically scheduled after school activities. You can be sure those things will be done on time (well usually at least close to on time) because adults are controlling those scheduled times.
The time you will want to work with would be what is left after scheduled items. For example, if your middle school or high school student has to write a term paper and hand it in 3 weeks from now, you will want to see some boxes on the calendar with the label “term paper.” That is good for as far as it goes. But here’s the catch.
Let’s say your son has been wanting to ask this very attractive girl out for over a month now and has just not had the nerve to do it. His term paper is due on this coming Monday. It is now Wednesday. Suddenly at lunch your very happy son is talking to this exact same delightful young lady when she casually mentions her birthday party on Saturday at the lake and how much she would like for him to come. “Perfect!” he thinks. But then he remembers those red boxes on his calendar for Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. Those red boxes are our “lock boxes” meaning they can’t be moved. This is the “lock” portion of our “Time Box Lock and Trade” system.
Will he get to go the lake with all his friends and the girl of his dreams? Stay tuned for our next post.
