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I'm going to share my tip which has worked excellently for me in the past few months (this is after years of iterating to find a solution). I have a note book,
by nstart 8y ago
I'm going to share my tip which has worked excellently for me in the past few months (this is after years of iterating to find a solution).
I have a note book, and I write timestamped logs into it as I go along. The emotions I feel when I take some extra time to do a tiny task because I got distracted by HN or something else is quite strong. I feel like this has had a very positive effect on self accountability. I can't bear to look at a log where it's written:
10:12 - Discovered that a file is missing locally. Which one is it? (extra note of file name)
10:14 - Going to check github to see if the file exists still and if not, when it got removed.
10:50 - (Insert expletive). Got distracted with Twitter. Back now. Checked file. It was removed in the last commit.
There are lots of other little elements I've included in my workflow like regular reflections and end of day planning for next day. But I feel like the physical logging activity is the element that actually makes it all work.
Happy to share more details on this workflow if anyone is interested. My build just finished so it's back to work before I become embarrassed by my log ;).
Edit - I was in a hurry to write this because of a build about to finish. I've got another build going and wanted to add that one other important effect of this process is forcing myself to think of the next step without the burden of keeping the previous contexts in my head. That's all written down so I can always pick up where I left off even in the case of an interruption.
- mackrevinack 8y agothe log of shame. that's a good idea. im going to try this today thanks
- mikekchar 8y agoYeah, this works for me as well. I keep a log in Org mode which is essentially the same thing. When I go back and read my log and say, "What the heck happened in this one hour gap", it makes me think.
- torvy 8y agoThanks for this. I've been giving it a go for a couple of hours now and it's quite useful.
- nefitty 8y agoI presume you don't log when you're in flow. To clarify, you only begin logging your actions when you notice you're procrastinating?
- nstart 8y agoGood question. No. I log during every stage. To clarify how it works, it's not a minute by minute logging. It's logging at every stage that one might normally pause and think. "Hmm.. ok that step is done, now on to the next.. which is..." . So when I'm in the flow which happens rarely, it'll be like: 11:47 - Alright. Time to implement the functionality to read the JWT token and store it and cache it for future requests. 11:52 - Test has been setup and is failing as expected. Let's pass this! 12:20 - Phew. Finally got that working. Making the function testable was a little harder than expected. Had trouble mocking the call to requests so that I don't actually get a token from the service for each test. Any way, that's done. Now I need to test if it actually works when running. How should I do that though? 12:26 - I have an idea! <there's be a flow chart diagram here and a bullet point list> 12:40 - NICE! It worked! Does that help clarify how I might go about logging? I find that the flow doesn't come all that often and most tasks I'm working on requires me to pause and think often. And the maximum time of work to pause is usually 20-25 minutes.
- Charlie_26 8y agoI have a notification with a timer set at every n:15 time of the working day, e.g. 9:15, 10:15, 11:15. This is because I find meetings rarely fall on to this time at my current place of work. The notification works well and constantly reminds you to keep an active journal.