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Productivity Journal
- Nathan Wailes
Related pages
Procrastination / Fear / Worry Journal
Important: The Productivity Journal is for all productivity-related thoughts / discoveries which do not involve conquering procrastination accompanied by anxiety. Fighting procrastination is such a large problem that I have a separate journal for it.
Accidental derailing goes on this (Productivity Journal) page: accidental daydreaming, getting pulled into a link that someone sends you, etc.
Experiential / environmental patterns of successful / rich people (there's a section on 'fast decisions')
Explanation
I have another page on my wiki called "Happiness Journal" where I log things that I notice seem to be making me feel happy or sad. The idea is that over time I'll gather enough observations that I'll be able to pick out patterns and get a good idea of what I should do in a given situation to make myself happier.
The idea with this page is to log my observations of what seems to make me more or less productive. Hopefully I'll gather enough good ideas that I'll be able to figure out how to improve my productivity.
Journal
"Keep a diary–a diary in which you ought to record your triumphs in the application of these principles. Be specific. Give names, dates, results. Keeping such a record will inspire you to greater efforts; and how fascinating these entries will be when you chance upon them some evening, years from now!" - 'How to Stop Worrying and Start Living' by Dale Carnegie
Important: The Productivity Journal is for all productivity-related thoughts / discoveries which do not involve conquering procrastination accompanied by anxiety. Fighting procrastination is such a large problem that I have a separate journal for it.
2016.10.29 (Saturday)
10:20am - I just woke up and I'm immediately jumping into coding for my WD project because I've noticed while working at my day-job that I find it much easier to do work as soon as I wake up, when I feel most-fresh. My thinking-power usually decreases after maybe 2 hours, and it gets especially screwed-up if I eat something bad, like if I buy a cookie for breakfast; my brain gets 'cloudy'. I think I've noticed the opposite if I eat healthy carbs, like tomatoes / carrots / spinach: my brain feels "clear"; I find it easier to think / I don't get the anxious/painful-feeling when thinking about something hard that usually leads to me switching to reading the NYT/etc.
When you think of a new task you need to do, add it as a TODO rather than interrupting what you're currently working on: I started to work and when I got to PythonAnywhere I thought to myself, "Oh, I should check to see how my auto-remoteOK script is doing". Normally I would have immediately checked, but I've realized that that habit leads to me getting side-tracked too often and never making progress on big projects. So what I did instead was add the task as a low-priority TODO to my daily notepad list of TODOS. I feel pretty optimistic that changing this behavior of mine will have a big impact on how productive I am.
2016.10.31
I just played a few games of blitz and now I'm switching to programming, and I feel a level of adrenaline from being forced to make decisions quickly that I think might carry over to the programming. That got me thinking that it might help to do some kind of fun warm-up activity before you need to do some kind of work so that you're in the right frame of mind.
Examples:
Before we would do shows in the college acting club, everyone would gather around and do verbal warm-ups.
Before doing soccer drills we would warm up by jogging around the track a few times.
Another trick that just occurred to me: set some small, achievable goal for yourself for the day.
I just sent brief pitches on my finance-video-series idea to Investopedia and Seeking Alpha and posted one of the videos on Reddit/investing.
The example that sprang to mind was when I was reading the "Success Principles" and the guy mentioned how the way they got Chicken Soup to become popular was by contacting five people every day for like two years. They just kept at it. So just focus on doing those five reps every day, and just don't stop.
2016.11.01
I was feeling really down / tired, and then I ate a big spinach salad I had bought at the store, and I soon felt much better. So I was probably suffering from low blood-sugar(?), and just needed some carbs.
I was able to go the entire day without reading news / etc. I think part of it was that:
I turned off my phone and put it in my backpack, so I couldn't randomly go on the Internet while taking breaks.
I set up Windows to block the websites I'd usually procrastinate with via my 'hosts' file. This definitely helped, as there were a few times where I was really tempted to go onto one of those websites, and having that small barrier was enough to overcome that urge.
Update 2016.08.26 - Blocking websites with the hosts file is a huge help.
Another trick I discovered: when I go up to work on the second floor, I was previously sometimes working from a part of the floor where I could see some traffic in my peripheral vision. I think it was subtly distracting me, and so today I went and worked in a corner, facing the outside wall of the building (which had blinds down), so I didn't have anything moving around in my field of view.
2016.11.03
Today I didn't use my usual relaxation technique (rolling my neck, etc.) and I actually felt much better; it was much easier to concentrate, I didn't feel pulled towards reading newspapers, etc.
I also took a nap at 5pm because I could tell that I felt tired and wasn't being as productive, and I think it was only 30 minutes but I felt fantastic afterwards. I also went and ate one of the Mediterranean paninis and two gelato popsicles which I feel bad about now. But my head feels clear; I don't feel exhausted. It's 6:13pm, so I should hopefully be productive the rest of the evening.
10:40pm - Wow, this ended up being one of the most productive days I've had in a LONG time. I want to write down as much as possible about the circumstances of today so I can replicate it:
I've been making an effort to get more sleep recently, although I'm still not getting 9 hours. I think I got 8 hours, which is much more than I'd been getting in the previous weeks (5-7 hours).
I've been making an effort to eat healthy food, and I've noticed (and I think I noted it here) that my mind feels 'clearer' after I've eaten a big thing of spinach or had tomatoes.
Today I ate: two small packets of Pocky (bad, I know), a pound of Oscar Mayer oven roasted turkey, I've been making a point of drinking a lot of water in the morning so I did that as well, and then I had my two Fage plain yogurts, my carrots. After my nap I went to the coffee place and got the mediterranean panini and two gelato sticks, then a while later I ate the big thing of spinach.
I was wearing two pairs of socks: the casual black socks underneath, and the more-dressy brown (thin) socks over them. I've been doing that so I can use the dressy socks multiple times. So my feet were comfortably warm even though it can get cold in the library.
I think the nap was a big part of why I felt great; IIRC it was only maybe 30-45 minutes. I should start doing that every day at ~4:30-5pm, whenever I'm starting to feel burned out.
I did waste time in the morning, and I felt really bad about it. I just need to block more websites.
Another big change I made today was to get out of the library basement and instead go to the second floor. I did this for two reasons: 1) the library basement gets cold, to the point where it's distracting. 2) When I'm in the basement no one can see my screen, and so I don't feel any peer pressure to be doing work. I can be browsing the NYT or YouTube and no one can see. So today I went to the second floor and sat at a table where other people were working, and I purposely faced towards the outside wall, so my screen was visible to anyone walking by or in the nearby study rooms.
And I didn't spend any time relaxing today, which is very unusual for me. That may have been a contributing factor as well.
Another factor was that I didn't feel blocked. In the past I would hit problems where I didn't know how to fix them and so I would feel really anxious because I wasn't making progress. Today I hit a few potentially-serious blockers, but they were similar-enough to problems I'd seen previously that I was able to get through them. (Ex: I hit a bunch of git / merging issues, where once I merged in someone else's code my repo wasn't working, but I'd actually seen the error message before.)
2016.11.08 - I fritted away the afternoon and only was able to start working at ~12-1am. I've noticed that I often feel anxious until I get very tired, at which point the anxious feeling that makes me want to procrastinate goes away. It may be worth experimenting again with alcohol to see if I can get rid of that anxious feeling during the day instead of it only going away at night. As it is now, I'm not going to get very much sleep tonight, which is just bad for my happiness tomorrow.
2016.11.10 - I've been noticing over the past few weeks that one of the hardest parts of working for me is getting started. It'll often take me an hour or more to get started. I should come up with some kind of routine that helps ease me into the work.
2016.11.11 - Ok, I think I may have figure something out: If I'm trying to start working but I can't stop thinking about other things, putting on a Magic Tape may help me drown out my thoughts.
Also, I think I prefer to not pick up a Magic Tape in the middle if I stopped in the middle of one the previous evening. I think I like it better to start a new MT instead.
2016.11.20 - Yesterday (Saturday) I had a schedule that worked great, I felt great all day and got a lot done: I spent ~2 hrs programming when I woke up, then got food and went to the Stanford cafeteria, where I did work until 6pm. At 6pm I went to the gym (which closes at 8pm), shaved, and did an intense one-hour workout where I only did two supersets, but I didn't take any breaks, and so I felt totally killed by the end of it. It was my normal all-leg workout, which uses ~6 different machines / pieces of equipment, going for ~10-20 reps per set.
2016.11.28
A good example of not looking for a quicker way around a problem: I needed to log into the web app for my local codebase and it prompted me to run the authenticator on my phone, which was off. So I had to turn on my phone to run the authenticator, which took a few minutes to start. I could have realized that I knew the login and password to the website from memory, so I could have just ignored LastPass and just typed in the information from memory. It was probably a good idea to run the authenticator anyway, but I wanted to write this down as an example of a situation where I didn't have a process for evaluating quicker ways around a problem I was facing. I didn't ask, "Is there some way for me to avoid using the Authenticator altogether?"
6:46pm - Today I tried a different way of arranging my schedule: I tried working for 4-5 hours, then I went to the gym at ~3:30pm, was there until ~5:30, then went back to the GSB library and started working again. So far I'm finding it way easier for me to concentrate on work / get stuff done than before I left for the gym. So this might be something to try again in the future.
2016.11.29
I'm measuring my time in 10-minute increments and already see what's causing me to slow down: I get pulled into daydreaming about other things, like the way I wish my life was instead of the way it is now.
2016.12.02
I noticed something today, that there's a distinct difference between 1) deciding to do something, and 2) then doing it. And once you've decided to do something, your productivity is determined by how quickly you knock it out and the quality of the resulting work. So, for example, I'll find myself coding, and I'll need to do some small subtask, and it'll occur to me while doing the subtask that, "You know, I could probably do this much faster and it wouldn't matter to the final result." And that motivates me to knock it out faster. This is just a slightly new way for me to think, so I thought it was worth writing down. One of my lessons from studying for the LSAT is that a lot of changing your behavior to become more successful is about having the right thoughts pop into your head at the right time; so, for example, when doing a particular type of LSAT question, you want to have the right "hint" pop into your head, so that it leads you down the right path. And now with this productivity work I'm doing, I'm finding a new kind of thought pop into my head, one where I'm asking myself about whether the task I'm doing could be done more quickly. Another analogous example is my writing: when I'm writing and I think I'm done, I'll have the thought pop into my head, "Oh, I should reread this to make sure there aren't any errors." And that leads me (IMO) to have better-quality writing than people who don't have that thought pop into their heads.
2016.12.23 - I got a fair amount of sleep last night but was sitting at my laptop in the morning and feeling tired and not feeling able to start working, and I realized, "This is a great example of a situation in which I'd end up wasting a lot of time. I wonder if there's anything I can do to get past this tired feeling and get productive more quickly...Hmm...well, normally people drink coffee...maybe I can try listening to music at a louder-than-usual volume and see if that wakes me up." And it seems to be working! The lights are also off in the room where I was working, with just cloud-hidden sunlight coming in through the windows, so that was probably also making me take longer to feel awake.
2017.01.12 - Yesterday at the gym I had something of an epiphany, which was that the mental process I think highly-productive guys are going through is, when they're faced with an objective X or an intermediate task Y, they have this voice popping into their head that asks, "Could I get away with not doing Y to achieve X?" or "What would happen if I didn't do Y?" or "What's the bare minimum I could do to achieve X?", instead of asking, "What's the proper way to get Y done?" or "How would a proper job of doing Y look like?" I often find myself asking the lattermost question.
So while I was showering before my workout, I practiced running through this thought process for everything I was doing, and I found it very interesting: I was about to wash my legs and I asked myself, "What would happen if I didn't wash my legs before I went to work out? Would anyone notice?" Normally I would just do it without thinking about it.
Parker Conrad definitely has this voice going on in his head. It was a big part of the culture at Zenefits. They would praise employees for passing a necessary government exam by the smallest possible margin.
2017.01.13 - I suspect it may help me be more productive if the room is just a tiny bit cooler than would make me feel totally comfortable. I'm not sure what the temperature is right now but I feel like it's in the 60s, maybe between 65 and 68?
On the other hand, I've worked in buildings where I was cold, and that wasn't any good. I think the ideal situation is for people to be able to adjust the temperature themselves.
2017.02.03 - I'm finding myself being productive today much earlier than I had been in previous days. I think it's attributable to a few things:
I stayed in bed a while longer today, only getting up when I felt good, and so when I got to the GSB library I felt great and eager to start working.
I left off my work yesterday at a point where I was 'in the zone', where I knew exactly what I needed to be doing, and I wasn't anxious about what to do next. So when I got started today I was able to quickly pick up that work and start to feel productive and get 'into the zone' again.
I felt kind of 'stale' sitting in the same place I'd been sitting in for months, so I decided to sit in a new area, and I think the change of scenery was refreshing and livened me up.
2017.02.14 - I was talking to dad today and he said that Carlos once told him that he found that it takes about three weeks of sustained effort when working on some new project before you start to really get into the groove and become productive. I thought that was very interesting.
2017.02.15
One trick I just noticed was this: I spent ~30 minutes working on a bunch of different minor things, and then at the end of that 30 minutes I switched to my Notepad and wrote up the different things that I had accomplished. This allows me to feel the warm feeling of accomplishment at looking at this list of things done, but it also allows me to work on these minor things without interrupting myself every few minutes to switch to the notepad. It reminds me a lot of when I was taking the LSAT and I would go through a 35-minute section without pulling over my answer sheet, and then at the end of that 35 minutes I would pull over the answer sheet and bubble all of the answers at once.
Don't look up at the mountain you've got to climb: Another thing I did differently today was that I didn't have a tab open for the Delighted website (the website I'm trying to create a clone of). I think in the past two weeks having that page open has been discouraging in the same way that looking up a mountain is discouraging when you're still at the bottom.
2017.08.31 - Today I tried a new work schedule that seems to be working really well: I went to work in the restaurant as usual, from ~10/11-6pm, then came back, but instead of going to sit in bed after finishing my 'normal' work routine, I sat outside at a table that I'd used before and really enjoyed working at, and since it was cooler (since it was the evening), I had a really pleasant (and very different from the previous 6-8 hours) work experience.
2017.10.24 - I've been spending an hour a day watching as John goes through online JavaScript tutorials and I think it has really helped me to stay focused on coding myself. I think especially if you started the day by mentoring another person it could be a great easy way to start the day on the right foot (instead of starting the day by checking news websites / twitter, for example).
2018.01.20 - It's amazing how much more time there seems to be in the day if you don't check any news, social media, games, or YouTube at all. You have lots of little moments of boredom.
2023.11.03 - I noticed a few months ago that I enjoy programming on my desktop PC more than on my laptop because everything is faster (especially opening new browser tabs, but also opening/running other programs like my IDE). I was thinking recently that I wish my laptop was as fast as my desktop PC and was thinking of getting a new laptop or even a MacBook in order to have it be as responsive as my desktop PC, and then as I thought more about it, I realized that my main annoyance was how slowly my new browser tabs would open, and that made me start to experiment with how I could get my browser tabs to load more quickly. That made me realize that my Chrome browser seemed to slow down after time, especially if I was using it to listen to music through YouTube (I think there's some kind of memory leak or something) and that made me think that maybe I should watch or listen to those songs on a separate browser so that my Chrome browser would not get slowed down and need to be restarted. So now I'm thinking that I may use the brave browser for searching Google and edge for listening to music and Chrome for Jira and running my applications.
2023.11.18 - I think it's not enough to have coffee, I benefit from having a steady stream of fruit, like a mango shake or cold apples fresh from the fridge.
2024.01.01 - I've been using a particular work setup for the past few weeks which has been incredibly effective:
Location / environment:
I work from my room. When I wasn't using caffeine I wasn't able to do this without procrastinating, but if I use caffeine it's fine.
I use my gaming PC to work, which has a powerful CPU and 32gb of RAM, so everything is way snappier to load, which means I get less frustrated waiting for stuff to load (like loading new pages).
I have a ~22in(?) monitor, a Logitech Mx Keys Mini keyboard (I really like this), some random gaming mouse and mousepad.
I have dedicated internet here which is generally very fast, so I'm not waiting for slow downloads like I might at some cafes.
I have a gaming chair with a box set up for my feet to rest on so that the front of my legs aren't being pulled down into the front of the seat in an uncomfortable way.
I have a gf that stays in the room and keeps me company, but she isn't interrupting me every few minutes to ask me for something like I've had happen in the past (and like I've heard happens to people who have kids).
Schedule/process
As soon as I wake up:
I go to the bathroom
weigh myself and record it in MyFitnessPal
have a 50mg Caffeine+ capsule and use the "Multi Timer" app on Android to set a countdown timer for 1.5hrs to take my next Caffeine+ capsule
If I make coffee instead of taking a Caffeine+ pill, I set a countdown timer for 3hrs because the cup of coffee allegedly has ~100mg of caffeine, double a Caffeine+ capsule.
I take a 10,000 IU vitamin D soft-gel, a 400mg acyclovir tablet
I turn on the air conditioning in my "living room" (where I work) to 27C
I open my door and window to get air flowing through my room (hopefully to ~550 CO2 or less).
If I can't get the CO2 down below 600 by just keeping the window/door open, I set up a fan outside on my porch that blows fresh air into my room.
I eat a full carrot and eat it while I start working, and I set another countdown timer using Multi Timer for 8hrs to let me know when my 8-hour eating window is finished.
While working:
I eat carrots while I work as I feel hungry / low-energy.
I re-up with caffeine when the countdown timer is done.
If I feel tired or my eyes hurt, I'll lie down in bed for 20-45 minutes (however long I want) to feel better.
I have an alarm on my phone set for 7hrs before my designated bedtime, which is when I stop using any caffeine.
I have another alarm at my designated bedtime to remind me to get into bed and turn off my lights.
I'll order grilled chicken and drink protein powder for other meals. I think the main thing I want to avoid with my meals is a sugar high, because the crash afterwards ruins my productivity.
I'll squirt lemon/lime juice into my mouth that I bought for my tea, but I end up just having it by itself. It's some Italian brand in the shape of a lemon.
2024.03.20 - I had a particularly good day today. It's at the end of the day and I feel fine, I don't feel bad/mentally-drained at all. I want to try to remember the factors that I think led to it.
I think one key was that I slept particularly well last night. I woke up after maybe 6-7 hours of sleep and then used the technique of listening to an Audible audiobook with my Samsung earbuds to fall back asleep again, and in total slept maybe ~9+ hours. On other days recently I've not slept so many hours.
I didn't have any caffeine today, with the exception of some chocolate throughout the day. But nothing strong like tea or coffee or caffeine pills that might make me crash later.
I think being in a new physical location (a cabin my father rented for me) is helping me to avoid feel the experiential boredom I might feel in my apartment. I'm now wondering if I should maybe book 1-week or 1-month retreats to cabins to get some experiential variety. I'm also reminded of Pieter's habit of frequently moving from one hotel to another; there might be something to that in terms of productivity from getting some new surroundings.
The cabin I'm in doesn't have any noise coming from outside, whereas my normal apartment might have some noise from the common area outside.
I didn't eat anything sugary that could have caused me to later have a sugar crash. IIRC I had some carrots when I woke up.
I didn't start looking at Twitter; I just briefly browsed IG and FB, and IIRC I opened Twitter, but I stopped after a few seconds because I knew that the more I read it, the more I was activating neurons that would later keep firing, prodding me to open up Twitter again. Very similar to Bill Gates tearing the radio out of his car.
I didn't have any distracting activities that I had to do with other people, that interrupted my day and got me to start looking at Twitter out of boredom (e.g. being stuck in a car ride). The problem with these things is that they get me to start looking at Twitter, and then I keep looking at Twitter when I finally have time to work.
Problem: At night I tried a sip of Monster Energy for the first time and I think it may have contributed to me not falling asleep when I should have.
2024.04.12 - It's 7:30am, currently 17c outside according to Google (it feels warmer than that to me in the house, like ~19-20c), I only got maybe ~5hours of sleep last night, but I feel good right now. I'm in Buenos Aires and it was cool last night but not very cold, and yesterday I didn't spend hardly any time on social media, I was only working at a coworking space, and didn't listen to any music. I feel like I didn't exhaust my brain as much yesterday (from the context-switching / experiential variety that comes from social media and music), and so I was able to recover with less sleep. I also feel like the cool weather is contributing to me feeling good, similar to how I often find it more difficult to think/work in Thailand when it's very hot. The main thing that is very interesting to me is that I slept only 5 hours and yet feel ok. My eyes feel a little tired but I otherwise feel ok.
2024.06 - I installed "SelfControl" on my MacBook, which lets me disable certain websites similar to how I'd use the "hosts" file on Windows, except with this I don't know how to disable the app / re-enable the sites. And the default way to use it is to set the sites to be disabled for a certain amount of time, which fixes the problem I had with the "hosts" file where I'd inevitably need to re-enable the sites, which got me into the habit of re-enabling them, which reduced the barrier to re-enabling them when I wanted to procrastinate.
2024.07.06 - Today and yesterday I've been working outside during the day and I've noticed a big improvement in my mood, I think the sunlight (indirect while I sit in the shade) is having a big effect. I get that really nice feeling of "ah, it's summer" that I would get as a kid while hanging out around Cliffside Park in the summer with my friends. It's helping me be more productive.
Also, I was feeling mentally tired and then I randomly decided to buy a tomato juice at the store, and felt way better (clear-headed, not as mentally tired) ~10-15 minutes after drinking it. I think maybe that was the antioxidants at work(?).
2024.07.18 - I added a 4x1 "Screen time" widget to my home screen (the first "main" screen) that shows my total screen time for the day as well as a breakdown of the top 3 apps. I also added on my second home-screen page a 4x2 "App timer" widget that shows how much time I have left for certain apps / app groups. Right now I have Facebook set to 15m/day and X set to 1hr/day (I feel like this widget should adjustable down to a 2x2 or even 1x2 widget).
2024.07.20 - Today I was pretty productive. I went out to work at a restaurant, I drank cocoa-with-water-in-ice as my caffeine source, then went back to my room when my MacBook battery ran out and played an X-Files episode while continuing to work and charging my computer/phone batteries. I'm not sure how much trouble I'll have falling asleep.
2024.07.21 - Tried melatonin for the first time last night (Twining's melatonin tea) after drinking a lot of cocoa and not feeling tired at bedtime, it was amazing how well it worked, but I woke up after ~4-5hrs, so I played some PC games, ate some food, then fell asleep for another ~4hrs.
2024.07.31 - I woke up after only ~4.5hrs and feel strangely well rested, I think it's the combination of the 300mcg melatonin I used as I went to bed and having had a lot of chocolate yesterday (20g cocoa in an iced cocoa and then 6 squares / 60g of 90% Lindt chocolate). I feel like the antioxidant effect of the cocoa is maybe reducing oxidative stress in my brain to the point where I don't need as much sleep to recover. Could be a huge potential productivity boost if it's true. I feel like the melatonin is helping me fall asleep faster than I otherwise would while having the caffeine in my system from the cocoa. So the cocoa plus melatonin seems like a very powerful combination.
2024.09.08 - I'm really liking my work setup right now.
I work during US business hours. I make an effort to go to sleep at around the same time every day.
When I work I drink iced cocoa (no sugar or milk), I think the mild caffeine and antioxidants make me feel clear-headed.
If I don't get great sleep on a particular day, I'll take a lycopene capsule and/or drink tomato juice. I think this also helps me feel clear headed / not tired.
I've been wearing a baseball cap low over my eyes again and I really think it helps me to stay focused. I ordered a FocusCap, I'm interested to try it, but I think the baseball cap is probably good enough.
I set a goal of at least 3hrs of work per day, 1hr of studying LeetCode, 1hr working on my own indie hacking stuff (Go+Vue), and then if it looks like I'll have extra time I'll be OK to do more work for clients. I'm nervous about spending more time doing LeetCode or indie hacking b/c I don't want to burn out, I think building the habit of doing it daily is more important.
I set up a 13x13 Go board next to my laptop and play a move every 5 minutes against the computer, I have a timer set up on my laptop to play a nice metronome sound to remind me to take my move. Right now I'm just playing a 5x5 board, not stressing at all about winning, just exploring the decision tree and building intuition. Having the Go board makes me feel more relaxed, like I'm having fun and not just punishing myself with work. I think it's a similar effect to working with friends.
I work out at restaurants / bars to get that experiential variety / remove any desire to look at Twitter / YouTube / play games.
I still have my phone set to 1hr limits for Twitter and Reddit, I really think it helps me to avoid wasting too much time on them b/c when I hit the limit I think, "Jeez, I really spent an hour on this already today?"
2024.09.10 - Today I'm realizing that if I'm going to be in a very distracting environment, like in a people-watching setting, it makes more sense to use that time for my personal studying / personal projects, where I don't have to be as careful about distinguishing between productive time and unproductive time. So, like, today there's a certain ~2-3 hour period where my working environment is going to be very distracting, and I'm going to use that to study LeetCode and work on my personal Go side project.
2024.09.12
Something I've been noticing recently about using a MacBook (because I've been curious why devs like Pieter say it's better for doing dev work) is that when I use the trackpad I can keep my right wrist in the "hands on the keyboard" position rather than having my right hand constantly switching back and forth between the mouse and the keyboard, and while it's true that the trackpad is less precise that using a mouse, what I didn't account for in the past (when I used to think the trackpad was inferior) is that dev work doesn't actually require anything close to the same level of constant precise mouse movements in the way that playing a first-person shooter like Counter-Strike does. What I've noticed is that my work actually involves far more switching between windows and desktops, and that keeping my hands on the keyboard with the trackpad very close to the keyboard allows me to switch between windows and desktops with a very small rotation of my right wrist to bring my three fingers (pointer/middle/ring) to the trackpad to do either the three-finger-swipe-up gesture to choose between apps in the current desktop or the three-finger-swipe-left/right gesture to switch to an adjacent desktop. I would say the main need for precise mouse movement is in getting a cursor to a particular position or selecting text, but that's just not as common or as crucial as the need for precision when playing a FPS. I could see a mouse maybe being more useful if I was using a GUI like Photoshop or Premiere that involves a lot of clicking around, but I'd need to try it both ways to compare.
Another thing about using the MacBook is that the great battery life means I don't need to think as much about where I sit. With my old ThinkPad I'd always look around for a seat close to a charging port, but now I can just sit anywhere and not need to think about it. It's just a small reduction in friction that helps to make work feel more pleasant. It's like when I was learning to play the saxophone or piano: I could learn to play on an old piano that was slightly out-of-tune and had less-nice (less responsive) keys, but it's just so much more pleasant to learn if I have a piano that sounds amazing and has responsive keys.
Another thing: I had a coffee and then a cappuccino today and I think it really helped me to stop feeling lazy about working on my side project. But I don't want to become desensitized. I think it may be good to schedule a weekly coffee to maintain my work habit and stop me from starting to spend hours on YouTube / Twitter.
2024.09.15 - Yesterday I tried working from the beach with my MacBook for the first time and it was amazing, and today I returned and was able to work way more than I normally am. I noticed a few things:
I chose a section of the beach where there are a lot of tall leafy trees on the actual beach itself (mixed in with the sand) that provide almost complete shade over the length of the beach, which means I can sit out in the middle of the day without feeling hot.
I face sideways, towards the section of the beach that is shaded, so that my eyes don’t get overwhelmed with UV and start to hurt, which happens if I face the ocean.
I’m back maybe 30 feet from the edge of the shade and maybe 50 feet from the ocean, so I’m not getting a lot of UV reflected off the ocean at me (which has sunburned me in the past).
I tried out several different seat types that are available for rent and determined that the hard plastic seats are far more comfortable to work in than the more-reclining types of chairs that either have a pure-cloth seat or a padded seat.
The oxygen level is fantastic, ~486 as I write this.
A cool breeze comes in off the ocean, cooling me more than if I was sitting in the shade away from the ocean.
I like to take off my sandals and stick my feet down into the sand as far as they’ll go, because the sand underneath is wet and cool, which cools my feet and makes me feel less hot.
It’s essential to bring a fly swatter and mosquito racquet, because there are flies and mosquitos that will drive me nuts if I don’t have a way to get rid of them. But I’m finding that if I kill the ones bothering me, I’m usually not bothered again for 30-40+ minutes until some new ones find me.
2024.09.19 - I asked Mischa (a Rally The Troops module creator) for advice about how to create a module and this is what he said:
For me personally a big motivation for creating games is getting them in the hands of actual players.
The games that I have created RTT modules for typically took me 2-3 months each, at least 20-30h a week. But I did burn out on my last two unpublished modules... (slow / uncooperative publisher and poorly designed game)
I got started myself by installing a copy of RTT locally and study some games with similar mechanics to the ones I was interested in.
After that setup a minimal version of the game with full graphics (map and core pieces) as soon as possible. Then build out the core game loop so you can "play" the game as soon as possible. This is the most rewarding feedback loop you can get.
I would suggest to start with something relatively simple (…) Look for something with 4-6 pages of rules, low amount of pieces/cards and simple mechanics. You'll have your hands full guaranteed.
Flashpoint: South China Sea w/ Harold Buchanan - Cardboard Creations
He also recommends getting a basic prototype created as soon as possible.
He recommends volunteering to help out as a way to get familiar with the space and get mentors who you can ask for advice.
2024.09.24 - Created a new YouTube/Google account to use solely for browsing dev-related videos, to use as my default account in my browsers b/c I'm tired of clicking YT links while working and forgetting I have my music-focused account set as the default YT account.
2024.10.12 - Installed Klack for macOS, it simulates the sound of a mechanical keyboard to make the act of typing a bit more enjoyable. It’s hard to say why it makes it more enjoyable, I think it’s hitting some kind of instinctual pleasure in seeing your actions have an effect on the world. I’m reminded of Jonatan Soderstrom talking about making games “juicy” by having lots of reactivity to the player’s actions.
2024.11.03 - Today I played some videogames (Receiver 2 and Factorio) while listening to podcasts and was really fascinated with how well I got into a flow state. The games also had music that played but it wasn’t too distracting. I think the combination of the podcast, the music, the ease of the game, and maybe also turning off the lights in my room contributed to the flow state. But I want to experiment with having a podcast running while I work to see if it maybe helps me to relax. I feel like the podcast scratches an itch I have for socializing that I would normally get in a multiplayer videogame from chatting / talking to teammates, or from working in an office or while on a call with my coworker or a friend.
2024.11.10
Something I’ve noticed for a while now but apparently haven’t written down yet is that when I drink a coffee I’ll end up putting on music at about as loud as it can go on my laptop. I’ve noticed that even if I don’t drink a coffee, if I put on the music at that same volume (or near it) it seems to help me from having my mind wander.
Today I’m experimenting with playing music at that very-loud volume while also playing a podcast (JRE) at a somewhat-lower volume (I can make out about ~97% of what they say). I want to try to get the same psychological benefit I noticed while gaming with a podcast on. [Update: I think it’s too hard to think/read if I’m listening to them talk, so I think it may be better to have the volume fainter so that I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I still get the hum of the conversation. Similar to a coffee shop, where you can’t make out any particular conversation but still hear the hum of the conversation and so don’t feel alone. I think having it so I can make out less than ~20-50% of the words is better.] [Update 2: I’m finding it helpful to adjust the relative volume of the JRE podcast and the music depending on how I feel. Sometimes it’s more helpful to have the podcast louder, sometimes it’s more helpful to have it less loud. I think maybe it’s better to keep the talking quieter when I’m first trying to get warmed up and figure out how to get started, but then turn the volume up once I’m in a groove and want to avoid burning out / getting bored.]
I set up my MacBook on my Roost stand at my desk where I normally game and I think the comfort of my gaming chair, mouse, etc. makes it a lot nicer to work than if I’m sitting in bed. I think the most annoying thing about working in bed is that I either have to sit upright and look down at my screen, which hurts my neck, or I have to slouch down, which isn’t too bad but still isn’t as comfortable as sitting in my gaming chair. I think another thing I’m noticing is that the lack of precision of the trackpad vs. a mouse is pretty annoying.
I’d been playing Factorio the past few days and I want to maintain the same kind of low-stress, low-anxiety approach to working on my side project that I have when working on my Factorio factory. I find I get really stressed out when working on my side projects because things seem to take so much longer than I want them to. But I also was drinking Coke Zero while playing Factorio, so I think that (caffeine) may also be an important part of staying focused while working on my side projects. I think a big part of enjoying Factorio is that I don’t feel at all stressed out when it’s not clear what to do next, I’m totally OK just kind of moving / looking around my factory, taking my time to think about what to do next. So I think I need to get better at doing that with my side projects: being OK just chilling out while looking around my site and thinking about what to work on next while listening to a podcast. I shouldn’t feel any pressure to get working on the next task ASAP; I should be OK spending an hour or more deciding what to start doing next.
Another thing I don’t want to forget is that I have a lamp behind me with a warm color temperature and it’s making a nice cozy atmosphere in my room. And I have the window open to get fresh air and the air conditioner on to keep the temperature cool. But the lamp is something I haven’t used before. When the lamp is to my side I find the light distracting but when it’s behind me it’s not distracting.