27 ms·
Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible
- ulisesrmzroche 7y agoYou can only do about four hours of solid work a day. That is the only trick I know that really works. Took me forever to relearn to. I went to school in Mexico where school is divided into two shifts, AM and PM; choose the one you want. 1-5:30 are my work hours unless the water around the business gets a little turbulent, in which case, I dunno, depends on if i consider you a friend or not.
- thomas 7y agoSerious question: Is anything less productive than reading other people's productivity thoughts? It's a combination of procrastination and finding out what works for someone who is presumably more productive than you (ie: guilt).
- vadansky 7y agoI was procrastinating and read about the Pomedoro technique and it worked pretty well for me. Sometimes you need a trick I guess.
- hackerbabz 7y agoPomodoro worked great for me until I just stopped wanting to do my job.
- sambull 7y agoBut really who doesn't want to be super productive as we work ourselves to extinction.
- vadansky 7y agoSame, but it's good as a stop gap until I clear up enough stuff to be comfortable to take at least 3 weeks off.
- wastedhours 7y agoThe same, Pomodoro works well for me when I'm already motivated. It helps focus and is a decent multiplier when I have a baseline already. When motivation is at a low, the 25/5 flips around.
- pleasecalllater 7y agoOne less productive thing I can think about is reading a comment about how unproductive reading thoughts about productivity is :)
- thomas 7y agoFor the commenter, but think about the time saving for the readers of the comment!
- OedipusRex 7y agoIt's turtles all the way down.
- savolai 7y agoOr in this case, tomatoes. (My first hn joke. Not sure if jokes are allowed but sure was worth it.)
- Ensorceled 7y agoIn the article you just read, the author writes an entire section: "2. Every productivity system stops working eventually and there’s nothing you can do about it" If you're like me and have ADHD, you read looking for your next system that will work for a while.
- antisthenes 7y agoAnd if you're a night owl, you inevitably learn how to sleep right through your alarms.
- adamsea 7y agoCommenting on them ;)
- marmada 7y agoI think it can actually be very productive if you engage with the article and take notes. Example: I read the following article over the course of 2 days. While I was reading it, I had VSCode open and was taking notes in Markdown. While this article only mildly changed how I acted, it definitely planted a few seeds in my head, which I am trying to cultivate. And now I have a source of notes on productivity I can look at any time! https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P3zrurj5hHKFKDL3M/productivity-working-towards-a-summary-of-what-we-know https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P3zrurj5hHKFKDL3M/productivi...
- rgoulter 7y agoNot everyone who comes across this post will be spending more time reading about productivity than being productive. The term I've heard for that is 'productivity porn'. (as in, getting the satisfaction from observing productivity, without actually putting in the effort yourself).
- egypturnash 7y agoYou never know when you’re going to find the next trick that will actually work to fool your brain into letting you get shit done for a while. These days I mostly rely on my own version of the Pomodoro method but I have definitely found value in other ideas now and then.
- bobowzki 7y agoWhenever I read one of these posts I'm always very curious about the age of the writer. I find my thoughts on this topic has changed a lot from mid twenties to mid thirties.
- arjan_sch 7y agoEsp. when reading the part about 15 working hours per day.
- guzey 7y agoNote that there's only 625 minutes of working during this "15 " hours work day. So working 5 days a week this is less than 60 hours of work per week.
- Scarblac 7y ago... Without breaks. That's more or less insane. However that's easily adjustable, the article is the same if we read half that number. It's the complete absence of influence of other people (be it in the form of SOs, kids, coworkers, office environments, meetings, bosses, customers, what have you) that makes it alien to me. If I could have 4 hours of real, concentrated, productive work on important things each working day, I would massively increase the impact of my work.
- guzey 7y agohttps://guzey.com/personal/how-to-use-your-wife/ https://guzey.com/personal/how-to-use-your-wife/ :-)
- guzey 7y agoHi! I'm the author of this post. I'm 22. I wrote most of this post when I was 20. I still agree with basically all of it. Also, I spent like 6 months writing it because most of the productivity advice is bs and wears off quickly and I wanted to make sure I only include things that stick.
- CPLX 7y agoThis is actually a pretty good list. Obviously it's personal and specific to him but it gives food for thought. With that said I've read a million posts like this and the only thing that's ever made me feel like I had genuinely changed my perspective and understood what was happening more clearly was reading the Getting Things Done book. The key insight for me is that so much of procrastination results from a lack of clarity about what exactly should be done next, and keeping a mental load of trying to keep track of everything. Separating the three basic concepts of planning, making decisions, and actually doing the work, into discrete sessions, has been a life changer. I still fuck off constantly and hate myself for procrastination from time to time, obviously, but using the core GTD framework and returning to it when I stray has really helped.
- reubenswartz 7y agoYes. And if you’re not sure what to do next, the next thing to do is figure out that next step. Sounds circular and silly, but helps tremendously to realize, hey, I got stuck, let me take a step back and figure out what I’m really trying to do and what tasks I need to complete to get it done.
- toxik 7y agoI would definitely recommend against having an hour’s commute to work. It is a really strong predictor for life dissatisfaction. Fifteen minutes is the number I heard to be a good balance.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoFifteen minutes does seem a good time, too far to pop in on a whim but not so far that the daily journey is onerous. Bonus points if it’s a fifteen minute walk.
- rootusrootus 7y agoThat seems like good advice. I currently commute 20 minutes and it's fine. Not too long, but long enough that work is far away. But if it were half again as long I'd probably get stabby.
- tomlong 7y agoI currently have an hours commute, which I find works quite well for me. It is a little bit unusual though - it is a train journey with no changes, I always get a seat, and I live about a 2 minute walk from the train station, and work about a 2 minute walk from the train station at the other side. The train journey is about 50 minutes. It's a good period of time to slowly engage and disengage - I do the things that might affect my productivity in the day - read HN, catch up on personal (and sometimes work) email. I sometimes read a book, or message friends. Everyone's different but this works nicely for me - when I get in from work I tend not to feel the draw of the screen, so my leisure time is less at risk from being sucked into for example reddit, and when I get to work, the period of the day that in the past I have previously lost a lot of productivity to - a 'few minutes' on catching up with the world, 'relevent' tech news etc I've already scratched that itch. I think it just sort of works with my fairly ill-disciplined personality traits in a way that helps me be productive. I think much longer though and I would feel I was losing too much of my day. (I'm typically out of the house 07:00-18:00).
- phito 7y agoI always look forward to my 50 minutes long commute. It's my podcast/audiobook time that I would never have otherwise.
- timerol 7y ago> If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple of minutes away (better: an hour away) The notion of a commute being beneficial is weird to me. If it takes more than 5 minutes to get to work, I end up spending the time engaged in something else, which leads to me being significantly distracted when I arrive. Thinking for an hour about what to do when you arrive seems like the opposite of productivity
- wry_discontent 7y agoBy happenstance I just ended up in an apartment that's a 5 minute walk from my office. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I go home for lunch. I spend 0 time commuting, I'm basically home as soon as I'm ready to leave. Compared to my other jobs, which tended to have more like a ~30 minute commute, I feel like I have so much more time in the day. I'm never taking a job where I have to commute again. It sucks the life from me.
- zettatron 7y agoA related anecdote: I lived in very small rural village in Nebraska for about 1.5 years . I worked at a small, sleepy, company that made radio broadcast software. I lived across the street from my office parking lot. The supermarket, gas station, library, and Post Office were all within 3-6 blocks. Although some opportunities weren't available. The ability to spend essentially 0% of my time commuting for any errands made my life very simple and enjoyable. I love in Boston now and work for a startup, so there's been quite a stark contrast between my lifestyle in the past year. Luckily I work completely remote now because I told myself then, I would never work or live anywhere that requires me to spend a dozen hours a week driving and doing errand.
- mdszy 7y agoMy workplace is 10 minutes away, I would hate life if I had to commute an hour every single morning for work.
- Scarblac 7y agoI travel about an hour, but I can read or work in the train. It's not that bad. I need the ~10 minutes it takes me to talk home from the train station to switch between work mode and be-nice-to-excited-kids mode.
- freediver 7y agoThe simplest productivity hack is finding passion. I never seen a windsurfer procrastinate. If you are truly enjoying your work and can't wait to do it, there is nothing going to stop you.
- wry_discontent 7y agoUnfortunately, that's not an easy thing to do. It's not practical for 90% of people. Being software developers, we're lucky, but even though I love what I do, I often hate doing it for other people.
- rgoulter 7y agoI liked the suggestion that the important difference between "for fun" and "for work" is reliability. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9EyzaH3jzH3PyQtM5/the-costs-of-reliability https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9EyzaH3jzH3PyQtM5/the-costs-...
- 0xJRS 7y ago90%? You think 1 in 10 people out there are passionate about their job and love going to work on Monday?
- neplus 7y agoDo you think more than 1 in 10 are excited to go to work on Monday or less?
- billfruit 7y agoSometimes one can be in a situation of the Buridan's Ass, there are multiple things interesting and exciting, but one can't fully commit to any of them, and end up doing none of them.
- CPLX 7y agoFind someone who has to windsurf for a living and you'll find one who procrastinates.
- gcatalfamo 7y agoAdding to the other comments wondering about the age of OP, I also wonder if, more than how to be productive, this doesn’t look more like “how to force you to work”.
- lowdose 7y agoEveryone seriously thinking about productivity is going to mention Little's law. If a resource is occupied for more than 80% the lead time is going to increase exponential. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law
- Rainymood 7y agoThis [1] comic is hilarious and I have it on my background. All self-help advice is bullshit and useless unless it changes your behavior. Find what works for you, experiment, take what works, discard what doesn't, rinse and repeat. [1] https://i.imgur.com/5bIKcWR.png https://i.imgur.com/5bIKcWR.png
- mrtnmcc 7y agoHow to achieve a productive mentality seems closely tied with individual dopamine and neuroscience factors (e.g. genetics like COMT / rs4680). Maybe these guides should be customized to 23andme results.
- WaylonKenning 7y agoI enjoyed reading this. I've personally found it difficult to shoehorn work into the 8-5. I've found that I work best speaking to people face to face and formulating ideas from 9am to 12pm, and I work best putting together slides and documents from 9pm to 12am. But between the two? I enjoy going out, seeing the world, hanging with my wife, doing life activities. Now that I know that, how can I fight it? Yes, I'm lucky to do a job that allows me the flexibility to be task-centric rather than time-centric, but I'm just happy that I've found a working model that, works, pun intended, for me.
- Scarblac 7y agoI need just one thing: a way to get rid of a bad habit that doesn't involve changing the circumstances in which I have that habit. I'm a Web developer with a mindless tic-like habit of opening sites like Reddit and HN all the time. Even a second after closing it. I can't very well get rid of Web browsers. Edit: ohh, but the tip of going to a place where I've never procrastinated before and sitting down to think what I actually want to do next, that doesn't involve a Web browser. Nice.
- vadansky 7y agoEdit: ohh, but the tip of going to a place where I've never procrastinated before and sitting down to think what I actually want to do next, that doesn't involve a Web browser. Nice. That is a great idea, but what do you call it when I do not want to do it because I start thinking about all the awesome things I could have done in my life if I started doing that earlier?
- Scarblac 7y agoMidlife crisis? Life? Last week I sat down with a notebook and wrote down my thoughts about what all my problems in life boil down to, how I should deal with each of them, what my next actions are... And then I noticed I was using an old notebook and on the first pages I had written almost the exact same things, in 2011. Except I was much more stressed about them then than I am now. Becoming wiser apparently means thinking the exact same thoughts as ever but being more relaxed about them.
- misterman101 7y agoWhat's worked for me every time I get in that routine is to force myself to do one to five push ups every time I think about switching tabs. During that time I think about what it is that I really want to be doing. After a while I automatically skip to this step without having the desire to refresh HN.
- Bootwizard 7y agoI used this to quit Facebook. It's an almost Pavlovian trick. You start to associate your habit with a negative connotation because you know that a short workout will follow.
- frlnc_throwaway 7y agoI highly recommend Jean Moroney's blog. She digs deep into the psychology behind productivity and goal-setting. I found many unique insights in her articles. Thanks to her writing I've come to believe that procrastination often stems from deeper emotional issues or an unacknowledged clash of priorities (for example, when you try to force yourself to do something that you don't, in fact, want to do, the deeper issue is that you haven't resolved the clash between your short-time desires and your long-term goals). E.g: https://www.thinkingdirections.com/dont-motivate-yourself-lead-yourself/ https://www.thinkingdirections.com/dont-motivate-yourself-le... https://www.thinkingdirections.com/three-steps-to-following-through-on-your-priority/ https://www.thinkingdirections.com/three-steps-to-following-... General list here: https://www.thinkingdirections.com/category/time-management/ https://www.thinkingdirections.com/category/time-management/
- mrieck 7y agoMore and more research is showing procrastination to be an emotion management problem. [1] That's why it's been really helpful for me to start keeping a journal. It helps increase self-awareness and helps when I get off-track on my side projects. I can can realign my goals and ease back into being productive again. [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90357248/procrastination-is-an-emotional-problem https://www.fastcompany.com/90357248/procrastination-is-an-e...
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoHave you guys ever read the "War of Art"? It comes from a place that understands Procrastination as an emotional problem, and has a fully developed solution for dealing with it in that way. At the end it gets REALLY artsy and religious in a way that made me very uncomfortable. But its still the most helpful book I've ever read on productivity.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI really disliked that book, I found nothing actionable in it. I only read it to the end because it is recommended so often and I hoped to find something useful in it. Sadly I didn't.
- vinceguidry 7y agoPersonal productivity deals in the hoary space between defining who you are as a person and figuring out the best way to move reality towards the vision. If you're not treating subconscious input with as much seriousness as humanly possible, (i.e. you're procrastinating for a good reason, one that probably relates to why you think this thing you're procrastinating doing is the best way to move the needle on that vision) then you will forever be living in a hell of your own making. Making yourself is an artistic pursuit and should be treated with every bit as much care and nurturing as making a painting.
- maxerickson 7y agoHow else can you reach your final form!
- gandalfgeek 7y agoProductivity is for peasants. https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/42828214104/productivity-isnt https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/42828214104/productivity-i...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoThat's more interesting than the title implies.
- taurath 7y agoNumber 1 and 2 are.... incredibly validating for me, in a way that I'm not sure I could believe when talking about procrastination.
- jamesmcnalley 7y agoNice list, Alex. Will take a look when I’m feeling less productive.
- jedberg 7y ago> If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple of minutes away (better: an hour away) One great hack for this is if you work from home, get up and get dressed, then go out for a walk around the block as your "commute" to work. At the end of your work day, take a walk again in the opposite direction as your commute home. Even though the ploy is totally obvious, it will put your mind in a work vs play mode depending on the direction of the walk.
- guzey 7y agoThis is a great idea and I used to do it for a while when I tried working from home. The problem for me is that I usually give on this ritual after a week or two. How long have you been able to sustain it for?
- jedberg 7y agoI don’t actually do it. :) my problem is that I work too much when I work from home. I can’t pull myself away. My solution was to have children who draw me away with their siren song of, “lets play legos daddy!”
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI don’t actually do it. :) I can't help feeling that most internet advice falls in this category.
- jedberg 7y agoI should have clarified that it was something I learned from someone else who actually does do it. But yes it is definitely second hand.
- WatchDog 7y agoHow many times do I have to tell you child, the plural of Lego is Lego!
- 7y ago
- crb002 7y agoNeeds to add in exercise.
- detcader 7y agoOn the `Incoming.md` bit, y'all might be interested in the Markdown New Tab Chrome extension which gives a similar affordance
- naushniki 7y agoI wonder when achieving personal productivity has become a widespread problem and why did this happen.
- zettatron 7y agoThe democratization of capitalism oversold the benefit of productive output
- wizzzzzy 7y agoDoes the 10hrs / day of actual working time described in the post seem exesive to anyone else? Half this time would typically be a very productive day for me and much more usually leads to a very unproductive following day.
- dfboyd 7y agoI looked at the guy's pie charts of working time, and unless I'm reading them wrong, he _never sleeps_. He has all 24 hours of the day marked as mostly work.
- lanekelly 7y agoHe's mapping his working time onto the pie chart. For example, if he works 9am-5pm, during that time he follows the pie chart's structure for that block of time.
- ssorallen 7y agoRE: 11.3 Browser tab management No manual, rule-based tab management ever worked for me, which is why I took over development for Tab Wrangler a while back and have been continuing to update it. Garbage collection for old tabs without me having to intervene. This has been the best system for me, and it has worked well for years. Old tabs are automatically cleaned up when I haven't looked at them in a while. It's all open source: https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler
- mackrevinack 7y agodayum. that's sounds like something I really need. every time i sort out my tabs it takes only a week before it's back to normal. when the tabs are closed and stored are they put into one folder or can they be put into month folders?
- ssorallen 7y agoThe closed tabs are stored in the extension's local storage as JSON. There is some basic sorting built into the extension, and you can use the export functionality in the "Options" tab to export the JSON info and work with it in other ways.
- sdinsn 7y ago> provides me with 625 minutes of work, interspersed with 275 minutes of breaks (provided my workday is 15 hours) Who the hell works 15 hour workday?
- m0zg 7y agoMost of the items on that guy's "todo" list wouldn't even qualify as "work" for me. For me meaningful work can only be accomplished in uninterrupted chunks of 2 hours or longer. There's so much mental context, and it's so complicated, it takes a lot of time to rebuild it. I do gnarly low level C/C++ and assembly (for Intel, ARM and MIPS). "Write a blog post", "clean up one note". If I used One Note or wrote blog posts, those would just be background tasks while stuff compiles or tests/benchmarks run.
- debt 7y agoI think the biggest realization I've ever had is that things take time away. The sensation of procrastination happens when you feel the "thing you need to do" should take some smaller constrained amount of time, usually in days or weeks or sometimes months. But if you can stomach that the thing may take years or even a decade, you'd feel much less like you were procrastinating. In addition, if you assume that the thing will always be done piecemeal, here and there, or when you can remember to do it say like cleaning a room or organizing a thing, then that can also alleviate the sensation of procrastination. The sensation tends to occur when you maintain a false belief that the things you need to get done should take hours or days instead of weeks or years.
- Draiken 7y agoI often get surprised how deep we got hooked into the system. We tell ourselves unless we're doing something (no matter how useless that is) we're worthless. Everything becomes a different kind of procrastination. We feel productive creating yet another CRUD app, idle game or advertisement optimization tool that ultimately does nothing for anyone but the capitalists on the top of the chain. Only to feel bad about doing anything that doesn't generate profit to someone. It saddens me that I don't see a way out of this hole. The system has won and everyone either follows it willingly or is forced to by society. If only I could be like the OP who seems to live happily in this productivity cycle without gazing into the abyss that is the meaninglessness of it all.
- scottishfiction 7y agoThere are places where you can find well-paid work that isn’t for ‘capitalists at the top of the chain’. Well, at least not directly. Do you think you’d find the public sector equally meaningless?
- scottishfiction 7y agoTo answer my own question, I’m not sure I find a great deal of meaning in most of my work, but I like doing the work and I like the people I work with, and I don’t resent the people I work for, because it’s ultimately the British public.
- Draiken 7y agoUnfortunately I live in a corrupt country where public work would possibly be even more harmful than private work. The incredible amount of wasted potential from human beings spent in the endless race for profits makes me sick. The irony of it all is that we're always trying to find ways to find meaning in life and ended up caught up in the most useless quests possible...
- zettatron 7y agoI'm very glad you have raised this point. This concept of productivity is quite new. Unfortunately, it has not remained flexible enough to offer the same kind of meaning today, that it did for workers at it's inception. Fortunately, many engineers, among others in technology-centric roles, have co-opted this definition to mean their intellectual output. Depending on whether or not an individual's intellectual currency is manifested via productive output, this hyper-productivity needn't be unhealthy in itself. It is when this desire overtakes those who don't derive value from the "hobby" of productivity that it becomes dangerous.
- antonkm 7y ago> "provides me with 625 minutes of work, interspersed with 275 minutes of breaks (provided my workday is 15 hours)." Why would you work for 15 hours? I aim for 6. No way that you can be productive for 15 hours. And, do you really want to spend pretty much all your time working? I followed along and agreed with lots of the stuff, then a comment like this throws me off. I totally understand that you're having trouble focusing if that's a normal day.
- zettatron 7y agoMy productivity hack is coming to terms with the fact that my life can't, and will likely never, be as optimised as the processes and routines that I like to optimize for work. There is something about the oppressive guilt of being "unproductive" that, for myself personally, far outweighs any of the benefits gained from being hyper-productive. Although I do feel a certain "high" when coming off of a full 8 hours of get-$#&+-done mode. I try to realize that isn't a switch that is flipped. It's just a derivative of my current state of mind.
- nurettin 7y agoMy productivity tip is to get old. If you are too young for that, watch an old person complete an overwhelming task. Model after their resilience and patience.
- nurettin 7y agoAnd I don't mean old as in obese diabetic vitamin d and iron deficient cranky old. I mean reliable old.
- NeoBasilisk 7y ago>Tabs have a tendency to blow up. However, there’s a natural upper limit for how much the can blow up, since at some point they overflow and you no longer have access to the rightmost tabs. ahaha hahahahaha
- joelrunyon 7y agoI've delved into this a couple times and put together a resource on some of my thoughts here. https://impossiblehq.com/productivity/ https://impossiblehq.com/productivity/ The "Workstation Popcorn" methodology has been particularly useful to work from home, digital nomads, and remote workers who feel "stuck" in one spot throughout the day. https://impossiblehq.com/workstation-popcorn/ https://impossiblehq.com/workstation-popcorn/
- lcall 7y agoThanks for posting this. One thing that I think really helps me is to have a reason for everything I do, better than pleasure/power/attention/toys, that is relevant to both the long-term and the short-term. So I know why, and that motivates me. One problem I might have had is too much motivation and I have had to adjust, to re-balance. I have decided that direction is more important than speed. I.e., making sure the ladder of success is not leaning against the wrong wall (Covey), and that we are not running in circles, or spending our lifetime on mere shiny things. What do we want to look back on after decades, or at the end of mortality? I.e., good decision-making, keeping in mind the purpose of one's life. My purpose in life comes from my beliefs, but I think a next candidate for purpose could be joy, which I suppose comes from knowing one's nature, and from learning/growth, and unselfish service to others (helping them learn and grow and be well & happy). So, balance while moving forward well, based the above, to me is much more important than getting more tasks done (though I am very task-focused when I am able, because the tasks relate directly to the purpose and related specific goals). This and other things help me feel peaceful and happy (life and learning are very much a work in progress, but some things I have gratefully learned). I have written more at http://lukecall.net http://lukecall.net (a lightly-loading, simple site), including about development of and candidate content for maturity models for different areas of life (mental, physical, social, spiritual). Feedback welcome.
- boldfish 7y agoPresumably no-one productive ever shared their life with anyone else? The best way to be productive? Work alone, as a hermit remotely, without the Internet. (tricky if you build websites)