Using Influence to Win Back Time
Welcome to an innovative approach to time management—steering clear of traditional to-do lists and task prioritization to embrace the art of influence. In this podcast episode, I introduce the “Box of Time,” a revolutionary concept inspired by the structure of bonsai trees. Here’s the essence of this time-tested strategy that blends psychology, communication, and boundaries for better productivity.
What is the Box of Time?
The “Box of Time” involves managing people’s expectations by clearly defining the boundaries of any interaction—whether a meeting, phone call, or project deadline. Just as a bonsai tree thrives within the limits of its pot, people work best when they have finite, clear parameters to operate within. Uncertainty breeds hesitation, while defined boundaries foster action and efficiency.
Influence, Not Control
At its core, time management through influence recognizes the human need for delineation. Whether it’s setting the duration of a meeting or deciding when to respond to emails, providing a finite structure helps people conserve energy and focus. For example, offering a specific timeframe for a call—“Let’s connect for 10 minutes at 2 PM”—makes the commitment tangible and manageable.
The Power of Live Interaction
Prentice advocates for live communication, such as voice or video calls, to cut through the inefficiencies of text-based exchanges. Emails and messages often lead to misunderstandings and wasted time. However, the key to encouraging others to pick up the phone is setting time boundaries. People are far more likely to engage when they know precisely how long an interaction will last.
Conditioning Through Boundaries
Responding to messages at odd hours or remaining perpetually available can unintentionally condition others to expect constant accessibility. The Box of Time helps professionals reclaim control by establishing firm boundaries. Setting a clear availability window—such as “I’ll reply to messages between 9 AM and 6 PM”—creates a sustainable balance between responsiveness and personal focus.
Overcoming Fear and Assumptions
The Box of Time is also a powerful antidote to fear and procrastination. Fear often stems from the unknown, but introducing facts and boundaries can help people move forward. Similarly, clear communication prevents others from making false assumptions, whether about your availability or intentions during work hours.
Why It Works
Human psychology craves the comfort of known endpoints. Just as high school students prefer running 12 laps over running indefinitely, colleagues are more motivated to engage when they can see the finish line. The Box of Time replaces vagueness with clarity, fostering trust and enhancing productivity.
Practical Steps
Schedule strategically: Use tools like Calendly or Outlook to define and share your availability.
Set clear expectations: Always define when interactions will end.
Communicate proactively: Clarify your boundaries to prevent misunderstandings and assumptions.
Main Podcast Page
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Transcript
On this episode we’re going to talk about a concept I call the box of time. It’s not a science fiction reference. It’s an incredibly powerful way to manage time – not by making lists or prioritizing tasks, as is the norm with most time management approaches but instead by learning how to manage the expectations other people and influence them to better align with your priorities rather than the other way around.
But to do this, let’s first talk about bonsai trees. Because that’s how my Cool Time approach works. My approach to learning skills like time management and others is based on a number of techniques all of which I feel are markedly superior to rote memorization and tedious classes. One of these is mnemonics: a method of learning things by observing items in our physical world, in this case, bonsai trees.
Hello and welcome to CoolTimeLife. I’m Steve Prentice. Each of our CoolTimeLife podcasts focuses on a topic dealing with people, productivity, technology, and work-life, and each offers ideas and facts you need to know about to thrive in today’s busy world. An index of our podcasts is available at cooltimelife.com.
A bonsai is a perfectly normal tree, genetically speaking; one that has been placed in a pot to control its growth. Often these pots are just a few inches wide, ranging from the size and diameter of a cereal bowl to maybe that of a bucket. Because any tree will only grow as far as its roots can extend, the hard walls of the pots stop the roots from going any further and therefore stop the tree from growing any taller or wider.
The art of bonsai is to maintain a perfectly healthy, genetically pure tree on a small scale. There are two different styles, generally speaking, one being Japanese, and the other Chinese. The Japanese style generally favors shaping trees in a dramatic, windswept style, as you would find in nature, while the Chinese style, officially called penjing focuses on a more controlled and often symmetrical style.
But regardless of style, a bonsai tree is a perfect tree. It’s a perfectly natural living organism, just held in check by the solidity of its surroundings.
What does this have to do with people and time management?
There is a substantial parallel here. People and trees are living creatures, and human beings also need and respond to delineations. Delineations help define limits, and limits help us stay alive. Here’s an example: Let me take you to high school gym class for a moment. Imagine yourself standing out on the soccer field or the football field, possibly on a frosty November morning, for gym class, first period. You hear the coach telling you one of these two commands, either “go out there and give me 12 laps around the field” or “go out there and start running until I tell you to stop.” So, my question to you is, which one of these commands is the lesser of the two evils?
Most people will say that the first one is the lesser of two evils. The idea of twelve laps is less evil because at least it’s finite. You can gauge the amount of energy required to get through this exercise. And that’s a very important point. It’s a “known.” You know when you will be able to stop. There is something here you can muster your energy around and you can get through this. Just get through these twelve laps in this cold air and then it will be done.
It’s the anticipation of that type of finish line – that known commodity that empowers people to do amazing things. By contrast, in situations when you don’t know when the ordeal will be over, your body will instinctively revert to a state of conservation, holding back from exerting too much energy out of the simple need to stay alive. That sounds pretty dramatic when applied to a high school gym class scenario, but the point is, no matter what the scenario we are facing, whether stuck on the side of the road in a snowstorm, or dealing with the rigors of gym class, or facing yet another Zoom call, we as humans need to know when things are going to be over.
If you want to motivate and influence people to work with you to show up to meetings and video chats on time, or if you want them to leave you alone to get some work done, whether you are in an office or working from home, or if you need them to deliver their piece of a project you’re working on – any time that people need motivation, the primary lever to get them to do what you want them to do is a delineation, a fixed line in the sand – a fixed box of time.
Let’s apply this now to a live phone conversation. I have always felt that talking live with someone is much more time efficient than sending messages. In fact, one of the greatest wastes of time in the working world is the game of messaging ping pong. Whether it’s email, SMS, or any sort of texting app, it comes down to a back-and-forth game of messaging ping pong: I send a message to you, you send one back to me. If I’m in a meeting, my reply might be delayed, which might annoy you some. Perhaps maybe the meaning of what you just texted is not clear. Text without context can be easily misconstrued. Since I don’t quite understand what you said, I send one back, and the conversation just keeps on spinning its wheels because, at the end of the day, text-based messaging is not an intuitive communication technique. There’s no subtlety, no context, it’s a very sterile medium. That’s why emojis were invented – to try and at least attempt to clarify its vagueness.
So many situations could be much better handled. If only we allowed the time to speak live one-to-one, face to face, or voice-to-voice over the phone or over video chat like Zoom, or Microsoft Teams. Whether the goal of the conversation is to solve a problem or to get creative, to work together on something, or simply inform someone, using vocal tone and body language to convey its meaning, the synergy that comes from the meeting of two minds gets things done far more effectively than text alone could ever do.
So, what’s the problem? Why is it so hard to get people to want to take that call? One of the main reasons is they don’t know how long it’s going to last. We’re all busy. We don’t have the time to take those calls of indefinite duration. So, we let phonecalls go to voicemail, and we ask people to “just send me an email.”
That’s sad, because a five minute or even 10-minute phone call will yield more creative or problem-solving output than any number of emails you could possibly send. There’s a synergy and a rhythm to live communication that gets much more done and tends to reinforce professional relationships at the same time.
So, to motivate someone to want to take your call the single best trick you can use is to let them know how long the call will be, and then stick to it. It’s not the agenda that is most important. It’s when it’s going to be over. This is not to say an agenda or an objective is not important. Of course, it is important. But the expectation amongst most of your time-starved colleagues is going to be that we can do this via email or text message. To make live conversation more important and attractive in their minds, the most important factor is “when it’s going to be over.”
This is what I call the “box of time.” Just like the pot that holds the bonsai tree, or the knowledge that the gym class running task is twelve laps, no more, people can muster the willingness to meet live, if they can see the borders around the event.
I might say to you, for example, “let’s have a call, tomorrow, at 2 o’clock for 10 minutes. I will call you.” There are three fixed, finite and survivable things in that statement: 1.) the day the call will happen; 2.) the time the call will happen; 3.) how long the call will be; and 4.) who will initiate the call. Those are all incredibly comforting facts. This becomes the box of time – ten minutes. You can handle that. And it is far more appealing than simply saying “I’ll call you tomorrow,” which puts people on the hook of uncertainty by being completely vague.
If you want to motivate people to do something, give them something tangible, something closed and defined: a ten-minute call, at two o’clock tomorrow. Or perhaps I’ll offer you the choice, such as two o’clock or four o’clock tomorrow. Which one is better for you? Let me know and we’ll talk for 10 minutes max. Or perhaps I can give you even more choice by giving you access to my calendaring app, in which I have strategically made certain time slots available for you to choose from (you can learn more about this technique by checking out our episode entitled Dynamic Calendar and Email Management) – whatever, so long as you establish a fixed duration of time – a box of 10 minutes, or twenty – that you will stick to. This is the box of time. It replaces the fear of the unknown with the manageability and comfort of the known. This is a major lever – a major component of successful time management. But, as you can see, it’s actually about managing people and their expectations.
Have you ever felt compelled to respond to an email or a message at 11 o’clock at night? Do you know what that does to the person at the other end? It conditions them. It conditions them to expect the same kind of behavior from you consistently, regularly, and forever. What seems to you to be simply getting something off your desk very quickly, or perhaps providing excellent customer service, can actually condemn you to a lifetime and a lifestyle of the obligation to be constantly available. 24/7. You condition people through your actions to expect the same kind of behavior constantly, which, in effect, takes control over your time out of your hands.
There is a better way – one that allows you to be available, but on your terms and in a much more controllable manner. This is where the box of time comes to the rescue – that bonsai pot. As a single example, you can set up a published schedule that says, “I am available between 9am and 6pm. If you leave a voicemail or send me a message outside of those periods, I will get back to you at nine o’clock tomorrow.” Something like that. Something that sets up boundaries and manages people’s expectations rather than forcing them to take matters into their own hands.
Another technique is to use your calendar once again, leaving strategically placed empty zones where they can choose a time. Yes. It’s called working by appointment. Doctors and lawyers do it. And why, because they are taught, on day one, to value their time, and not give it away. You can be like that too. You deserve to value your time.
You can create available time slots on your internal calendar like Microsoft Outlook, or if you deal with a lot of external people, by using an online version of your calendar, like Calendly.com. These tools make available boxes of time that your customers – whether internal or external can not only pick and choose a time to connect with you but are also aware of its duration (that’s the box of time) and are satisfied because their needs and expectation have been met.
The actual time availabilities that you set up are up to you of course but setting them up gives people something they can work with. It makes your calendar a tool of influence and productivity, not just an appointment diary. People can be flexible if they’re given alternatives that they can live with. This is like water flowing around a rock in a stream. The water will move around the rock to find a path of lesser resistance. Your availability and non-availability are the rocks in your stream. People can move their actions and expectations around these blockages, providing there is something else to go towards.
Imagine you had to go to the dentist. Someone says to you, “hey, can we meet tomorrow at 10 o’clock?” And you say, “no, sorry, I’ve got a dental appointment.” It’s very unlikely that that person will say, “well, no problem. I’ll come with you, and I’ll sit in the chair next to you while you’re having your teeth cleaned and we can speak while you’re doing this.” No, they’ll wait until you come back because that is a suitable and acceptable rock in their stream. They can move around it they can live with it. Life goes on.
What I’m suggesting is the same principle can apply to other things. If you have some work you need to get done some focused time you really want to focus without being disturbed or you want to go home at five o’clock or six o’clock. Set up these boundaries. Condition people by publicizing and communicating these boundaries, respecting them yourself, and not falling prey to the temptation of responding to emails or responding to messages outside of those boundaries.
Everything you do conditions other people. Even if you reject all this advice and just go your own way – even if you choose not to condition people, you are still conditioning them through your inaction.
But remember, human beings like to be led. They like to be guided. They thrive on the comfort of a known fact as opposed to an unknown one. Knowing I have a video chat appointment with you tomorrow at 10, is far more comfortable than not knowing when we will be able to connect. Ten o’clock tomorrow might feel far away, but it’s something we both can count on, and there’s great value in that. Not only in the context of that meeting itself, but more importantly, in the context of our relationship. This is your chance to guide and influence other people through a box of time.
Bad News
There’s another concept that works in the same area, and that’s bad news. No one likes to give bad news. No one likes to receive bad news. But you know what is better about the situation? Human beings are extremely good at taking bad news, turning it around. And working with it.
Huge amounts of procrastination happen because people avoid what they fear. Fear is the most powerful emotion of all, and human beings are dominated by emotion, not logic. So, we tend to spend a lot of time hiding from or running away from those things that scare us. But the fact is we are generally very good at taking bad news and saying, “okay, what’s next? Where do we go from here?”
Once again, the box of time concept comes into this arena. If you suffer from procrastination, if you are putting something off because you fear it or hate it, that’s perfectly natural, and perfectly understandable. But the fact is, taking on bad news or delivering bad news to others gives them – and you – the chance to start working on the next step. This falls into the same concept of the box of time. It makes the issue tangible and real which actually helps overcome the fear. It allows you to work on facts that can come up to meet the fear and empower us to move forward with the next step. So, the box of time isn’t simply about scheduling activities. It’s also about giving people something tangible, something that will overrule the profound fear that they feel when they are facing the unknown.
Assumptions
The last of the concepts that I want to share with you is the notion of assumptions. People will always assume things if they do not have facts to back up what they see.
Assumptions are natural. People come to them just because they need to fill a void in their perception of reality. So once again the box of time concept, this tangible notion, comes into play in the obligation for you to deliver to people hard facts.
Imagine you are in the office – or a virtual online environment, and you are spending some time focusing on your work. Because of this, you don’t say “hi” when someone passes by your desk. The immediate assumption that that person might make is that you’re not responding because you’re having a bad day, or you’re being rude. Or if you’re online, you have your camera off or are looking really bored. These are problems. Small, nagging issues that have the potential of growing into something more – something that will further erode a relationship.
These types of assumptions can be corrected but simply introducing people to the facts. Guide them. for example, if you’re looking to schedule some focused time in your day – time when you are unavailable, or if you need to leave the office at a certain time, or you want to leave your Zoom camera off to preserve bandwidth or to reduce eye fatigue – a very real problem by the way – then take the initiative and deliver the facts that will remove peoples’ instantaneous and erroneous assumptions. You must bring up the facts to meet this type of fear response that is giving people the wrong impression.
The Known always beats the unknown
All of these concepts in this podcast come up to one thing, really, which is that the known always beats the unknown. But the human mind is such that when it does not know something, it seeks an answer wherever it can find it.
If you are looking to guide people, give them a box, give them a fixed finite duration. Answer the question, “When will it be over?” When you’re calling a meeting, the agenda is not the most important item of the meeting. The agenda should have already been agreed upon. The most important thing that will make them show up on time, ready and engaged is, again, “when is it going to be over?” When will this meeting be done?” That’s what’s going to allow them to muster the energy and stamina to get through this event. Just like the 12 laps around the field. When you have a phone call when you have any sort of interaction, think that the first thing that that comes to their ears, to their awareness, is when will this be over? That is the primary motivator of human action. So, there you have it. My podcast about the box of time, and how a little delineation goes a long way toward managing people’s expectations and getting them to work with your priorities.
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Long-Tail Keywords:
Time management through influence
The Box of Time productivity strategy
Efficient communication strategies in the workplace
Benefits of live calls over text-based messaging
Setting boundaries to avoid workplace burnout
Time management tips for remote professionals
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