How to be productive / fight procrastination / focus

Have the right expectations of the process

Don't expect to feel 'in the mood' when it's time to start working; don't listen to the voice that says, "I'm not in the mood right now, I'd rather do something else"

• Pumped Up Kicks

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_Up_Kicks

    • Soon after Mark Foster formed Foster the People in 2009, he wrote and recorded "Pumped Up Kicks" in five hours while working as a commercial jingle writer at Mophonics in Los Angeles. On the day of recording, Foster debated between songwriting in the studio and going to the beach. He explained: "I really didn't have anything to do that day. I was standing there in the studio, and this thought came in my mind like, 'I'm going to write a song,'... and then I was like, 'I don't feel like writing. I don't want to write a song.' I was a block away from the beach, and it was a beautiful day. I kind of just wanted to just be lazy and go hang out at the beach or whatever. But I just forced myself to write a song... By that time the next day, the song was finished."

      Reflecting on the lack of inspiration he felt when writing the song, Foster said, "I've heard a lot of other artists talk about this as well, like, 'I'm not inspired right now. I've got writer's block. I'm just not really feeling anything.' And I've felt that way, too, just not being inspired and wanting to wait for inspiration to come before I wrote. But I wasn't inspired when I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks,' and that's what came out. So... it just solidified the notion that perspiration is more powerful than inspiration." Thinking that he was just recording a demo, he played all of the instruments on the song, and using the software Logic Pro, he arranged and edited the song himself. The demo is ultimately the version of the song that Foster released.

      "Pumped Up Kicks" drew considerable attention online after Foster posted the song on his website as a free download in early 2010; Nylon magazine used the track in an online advertising campaign, and through various blogs, it went viral.

      • It's worth noting that he was working as a commercial jingle writer, so he was in a position where he wouldn't be wasting time learning how to create music once he decided to try to make something.

      • It's also worth noting that he posted it as a free download, which presumably helped it go viral.

Decide in advance what you're going to work on and how many hours you're willing to spend to finish it

• Explanation:

  • This is just a way to help you focus on a single project, avoid feature creep, and see it through to completion.

• Others' experiences:

  • Leonardo Davinci

    • 2018.05.21 - Gates Notes - Leonardo is one of the most fascinating people ever

      • There was one downside to having such broad interests: He often switched his focus to new domains right in the middle of a project, leaving works unfinished. Here’s a classic example: After Leonardo won a coveted commission to create a large statue of a nobleman perched on a horse, Leonardo procrastinated by going down multiple rabbit roles. For example, he dissected horses to understand their anatomy, created new systems for feeding horses, and designed cleaner stables. He never completed the statue, and he never published the treatise on horses he started.

• My experiences:

  • I have a serious problem with switching projects and feature creep.

Consider limiting the number of projects you take on at once

• 2023.09.15 - I'm thinking I'm going to only study one job skill at a time and limit myself to ~30mins per day to prevent myself from burning out.  Right now I want to finish a Golang course, do the fast.ai course, and memorize the Neetcode 150, but to prevent burnout I think I'm going to just focus on one at a time.  So maybe finish the Golang course, then do a first pass through the fast.ai course (taking notes on the videos but not reading the full chapters), then do a month of Neetcode, then maybe go back to fast.ai.  I'm so happy with how much progress I've made with Duolingo from just studying 3-5 minutes per day, and I owe it to never burning out.  My #1 problem is that I burn out and then go for months or years without starting up again.

Set up your body to help you be productive

Get enough sleep

• Explanation:

  • I've noticed that getting enough sleep helps me to avoid procrastinating.

• My experiences:

  • 2015.12.08

    • For the past few weeks I had not been getting as much sleep as I should have (~3-7 hrs/night).

    • In the evenings I would always feel this kind of mental pain / anxiety that would compel me to try to relax by reading the NYT or RPS or Kotaku.

    • Last night I got more sleep than normal (~8-9 hrs?) and I felt much more concentration today at work, and it's now 10:20pm and I'm still being very productive without feeling a compulsion to go read the NYT / RPS / Kotaku.

Don't use an alarm clock

Consider taking a 90-minute nap after your first four hours of work

• Explanation:

• Others' experiences:

  • Joel Spolsky talks about how people can only do four hours of productive work per day.  Find the quote.

• My experiences:

  • I've noticed that I tend to feel a bit burned out after about four hours of work, and I've also noticed that taking a 90+ minute nap can help clear that 'brain stress' and make me feel refreshed and ready to go for another four hours.

Consider using stimulants

• How to:

  • Stimulants people have used:

    • Caffeine

      • Types:

        • Dark chocolate

          • ~6.61mg per square of 90% dark chocolate.

            • Lindt says 30g of dark chocolate has ~20mg of caffeine.  Their 90% dark chocolate bar is 3.5oz or ~99.22g, so with 10 squares each square is ~9.92g, and so each square has (20mg/30g) * 9.92g = ~6.61mg of caffeine.

        • Tea

          • 20-50mg per cup (seems to vary by the type of tea and how it's prepared)

        • Coffee

          • 95mg per cup

        • Espresso

          • 64mg per shot (30g / 1 fl oz)

        • Caffeine pills

          • These are generally 100mg-200mg per pill

        • Caffeine capsules

          • Caffeine+ - 50mg per capsule, along with L-Theanine, L-Tyrosine and B-vitamins - This is what I'm using as of January 2024 in situations where I don't need a dopamine high to get excited to work on something, I already know what I need to do next. So, like, when working on client work.

        • Excedrin

          • 65mg per capsule, the same as a shot of espresso.

    • Alcohol

      • Explanation:

        • Alcohol initially acts as a stimulant and then acts as a depressant (making you want to fall asleep).  So it's maybe not the best stimulant to use if you need to do work that requires you to be awake for many hours (like programming 12 hours).

        • Alcohol's ability to reduce inhibitions may make it good for work where you need to bond with other people, like sales jobs.

      • Types:

        • Beer

    • Amphetamines

      • Adderall

        • Tom Francis started using this after years of only using caffeine.

      • Methamphetamine

    • Cocaine

• Others' experiences:

  • Tony Hsieh

    • He used Excedrin while writing his book.
      
      

      • https://www.racked.com/2014/4/17/7605231/7-things-we-learned-about-zappos-founder-from-playboy
        
        

        • "I found it was easy to write once I was in the mood, but it was hard to get in the mood. So I tried various things based on feedback from writer friends. Vodka first, then coffee and then, yes, I actually soaked coffee beans in the vodka. But I found the most effective technique was taking Excedrin when I didn't have a headache because there's actually a lot of caffeine in Excedrin. I ended up writing the whole book in about two weeks' time."

      • https://footwearnews.com/2010/business/news/reading-tony-hsieh-76614/

        • While Hsieh found it relatively easy to put his life on paper, the schedule was grueling. “We would write for 24 hours and then go nap for an hour,” Hsieh said.  So how did they stay energized?  “We tried coffee. And alcohol. And then coffee and alcohol,” Hsieh laughed. Said Lim, “We actually put coffee beans in a vodka bottle.” But according to Hsieh, Excedrin worked best. “When you don’t have a headache, it gives you a lot of energy.”

  • Mark Zuckerberg - He had blog posts while at Harvard where he mentioned drinking alcohol while coding.

  • Infer guys (Yang and Chung)

    • They were big into drinking espresso.  Chung was an espresso fanatic.

  • Investment bankers / traders

    • These guys apparently work grueling schedules and my understanding is that cocaine use is prevalent.  I'm not sure why it would be used more than caffeine / amphetamines, though.  Maybe it gives people the courage to take risks or something, which could be more important in finance/trading.

• My experiences:

  • Personally, I currently (5/27/23) only use dark chocolate (which has caffeine in it) because I think anything stronger messes with my sleep too much.  Beyond chocolate I've only ever tried coffee and tea.

  • I made a video talking about how I've noticed that a lot of successful entrepreneurs are heavy users of stimulants (coffee, Adderall / amphetamines, and/or cocaine): YouTube - Nathan Wailes - Stimulants may be a secret to financial success

  • One thing to consider alcohol / caffeine to make yourself productive during your free time!

    • Don't use it while at work, save their effects for your personal projects.

    • I did this while playing CS but it only occurred to me recently (2016/01) to use it for programming.

Consider getting some in-person talking time with friends

• 2023.09.02 - I think I noticed today that after spending a couple of hours chatting with other people for fun, I found it easier to focus on doing my own work, without feeling agitated about not having fun. I'll keep an eye on this to see if I notice it in the future.

Set up your work environment to help you be productive

• "It's a lot more effective (albeit tricky to pull off) to alter your environment so that it pushes you towards doing what you need to be doing, than it is to try to force yourself to do it." - François Chollet (src)

Consider using a powerful computer

• Explanation

  • Having a powerful computer will reduce lots of small points of friction that make work less pleasant, like needing to wait a few seconds for apps to start.

  • These small gaps of time while you're waiting for the computer to finish something (like load a tab, or install something, or build code) are one way that procrastination starts: you may reach for your phone to check social media while you wait, and end up spending far more time on social media than you originally planned. 

• Others' experiences

• My experiences

  • 2023.05.27 - I've been working on my powerful gaming PC the past few days and I like it a lot more than working on my laptop, because all the software works faster.  Like if I open a new tab, or open a new PyCharm project, etc.  That reduced friction makes it a lot more pleasant to work.

  • 2024.06.08 - I just started working on my new MacBook Pro and it's opening my eyes to the fact that a lot of my "procrastination" is just me grabbing my phone to browse Twitter when my computer is being slow to do something, and then I end up wasting an hour. Having a lightning-fast computer gets rid of that mechanism for procrastination.

Consider getting a powerful internet connection

• Explanation

  • This reduces friction / waiting time when downloading stuff.

  • This can also be useful if you're doing calls with people or coworking in VR.

• Others' experiences

• My experiences

Clear your desk

• Explanation

  • A lot of successful people have said they keep their work environment clear of clutter.  I need to compile the quotes/examples.

• My experiences

  • I've noticed that when I have objects on my desk that are unrelated to work, they have an immediate effect on my brain where they get my brain to load thoughts related to that object.  So, like, if I have a videogame controller on my desk, it'll make thoughts related to those games pop into my head when my eye randomly looks at that controller.

  • If I turn off the lights in my room, I can just move stuff behind my PC screen and they'll be in the dark where I can't see them well.

• Others' experiences

  • https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-case-for-finally-cleaning-your-desk

    • "scientists at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute have used fMRI and other approaches to show that our brains like order, and that constant visual reminders of disorganization drain our cognitive resources and reduce our ability to focus. They also found that when participants cleared clutter from their work environment, they were better able to focus and process information, and their productivity increased."

Have enough airflow to keep the CO2 levels down / oxygen levels up

• My experiences:

  • In my apartment I've achieved this by just keeping my door to the hallway ajar and my window open (assuming there's a window open in the hallway which can allow for airflow).

  • I've also bought a CO2 monitor in the past and found it well worth the money.

Have the room at a comfortable temperature

• My experiences:

  • I've noticed that if I'm really hot or really cold I can't focus as well.

  • I like the combination of having my windows open for fresh air and having the air conditioner on to keep the room cool.

Prevent visual distractions

Consider turning off the lights in the room you're in

• This has helped me stay focused / remove distractions.

  • I did this at Infer.

  • I also did this while working in my room (5/26/2023).

  • I also do this while playing PC games to get more immersed in the game.

  • Movie theaters do it.

Consider using a trucker hat to restrict your vision

• I've noticed that the hat can help in at least two different-but-related ways:

  • During the day, using the hat to block my view of the sky seems to help reduce eye strain caused by bright light from the sky.

  • If there's a fair amount of foot traffic or people moving around where I'm working, I find blocking my vision with the hat helps me fight the urge to look at who's walking by (it feels like an instinctual defensive urge, like to make sure the person isn't a danger).

• When I use the hat, I wear it unconventionally: the hat is too small for my head, so I have it on the front of my head, with the front of it resting just above my eyebrows, and the brim level with the top of my laptop.  It's like how you see Marine drill instructors wearing their hats.

Consider listening to music

• My experiences

  • I spent a few days playing FF8 and then asked myself why I found myself getting swept into it, while that doesn't happen with work. I think part of the reason was that FF8 has constant music, so I don't get distracted by other thoughts creeping into my mind.

    • Later: FF8 also doesn't really require much effort. It's like an interactive novel. I find that I often stop doing work when I get stressed out about it, and the same thing happens with games (e.g. 'rage quitting').

  • I tried applying this to work by listening to a Magic Tape and it worked. I had previously used Magic Tapes while programming but I can't remember having considered them for non-programming work.

  • I think one nice thing about music is that it provides some experiential variety that keeps you from feeling bored.  I talk about that in a YouTube video here: YouTube - Nathan Wailes - Experiential variety may be a secret to productivity

  • I like listening to mixtapes or radio stations where I don't need to constantly be choosing the next song.

    • YouTube - lofi hip hop radio 📚 - beats to relax/study to

      • 5/27/23 - This is a nice radio station because it's not as intense as house music, so it doesn't mentally tire me out as much (I think).

Consider having your tasks on one or more physical piece(s) of paper on your desk

• Explanation

  • If you combine this with otherwise clearing your desk it could be a powerful way to have your mind return to your tasks when it starts to wander.

• Others' experiences

  • Pieter's a big proponent of having his tasks on individual yellow post-its.

• My experiences

  • 2015.03 - For a day or two I was finding it extremely effective to start the day by writing out a list of tasks I wanted to get done that day, and then keeping that list in front of me while I was working on each task.

Remove distractions on your computer

Block distracting websites

• Explanation

  • These are sites that you never have any productive reason for visiting. Examples: facebook.com, nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com. StayFocusd actually provides a pretty good list of distracting sites to start with.

• How to

  • On Windows you can totally block distracting websites that you never want to be able to visit via your hosts file.

  • You could also use StayFocusd for potentially-distracting sites that you still want to be able to access.

    • Examples: YouTube, Wikipedia, Quora(?), Reddit(?). I recall being frustrated on occasion that StayFocusd was blocking some useful information on those sites, but I'd already run down all my StayFocusd time on nytimes.com.

  • On macOS I use SelfControl, IMO it's way better than the "hosts" method on Windows, because I don't know how to undo it, and it automatically stops after an amount of time that I set.

• My experiences:

  • I use my hosts file to block news / gaming / video websites.

  • An idea: I could have two users on my computer and do work on a non-administrator account, so that I can't change the hosts file from within that account. It adds just a little more friction, hopefully enough to get you to think about whether you really want to procrastinate.  But that would make it hard to do stuff like install new software.  So maybe have an admin account but have the account load without all the distracting software (like games).

Uninstall distracting software

• My experiences:

  • In the past I've uninstalled Steam and GOG Galaxy, and all other video games.

Prevent email and chat apps from interrupting / distracting you

• How to:

  • You could quit / turn off the chat apps.

  • On Windows you could move the chat apps out of the visible part of your task tray.

  • You can enter 'Do Not Disturb' mode to prevent being notified.

  • Note that there are two ways these things can interfere:

    • one is by actually popping up a notification / sound, and

    • the other is by having a visible indicator of a new message/email that you happen to see when you look at the email tab or app icon.

• Others' experiences

  • This is mentioned in Joel on Software

Remove distractions on your phone

Use a e-ink phone

• As of 2024 a quick Google/Reddit search seems to indicate that the Hisense A9 is the best e-ink phone on the market.

Use app timers/disablers

• I 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). When the time for a particular app runs out, its icon turns grey and I can't open it unless I increase its allocated time in the App Timer.

Add 'screen time' widgets to your home screen

•  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. 

Consider working with others

In public

• My experiences:

  • I've noticed that when I'm working in public where people can see what's on my screen, I feel more embarrassed to watch YouTube, play games, or browse Twitter.

In a coworking space

In a VR coworking space

On a screenshare call

• My experiences:

  • 2018.05.11 - I took on an Upwork assignment where my client was a programmer, and we were kind of pair-programming the entire time (I was sharing my screen and he was giving me instructions of things to try), and we did a 16-hour day. I was pretty impressed at how long I was able to go. So maybe one way to help get yourself past procrastination is to pair-program, either by watching someone else code or by having someone else watch you code.

  • 2023.05.27 - For the past two weeks John and I have been meeting up in Horizon Workrooms or ImmersedVR and taking turns sharing our screens as we each work for 30 minutes on our respective business ideas.

Consider deciding in advance how long you'll spend on a task

Set a budget/schedule for larger goals

Consider using OKRs ('Objectives and Key Results')

• Explanation:

  • Use OKRs or something similar: have yearly goals, quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. For each objective, define success in a measurable way, usually with several "key results".

• How to:

  • Template - 2016 - Q2 OKRs, Calendar, and Daily Schedule.docx

Consider setting a budget/schedule for smaller tasks

• Others' experiences

  • Tom Francis, when working on Gunpoint (and presumably Heat Signature) would decide ahead of time how much time he wanted to spend on various tasks that he needed to complete. (Source)

Use Task Lists / To-Do Lists

• Explanation:

  • If you don't have all of your daily goals in front of you, it's easy to spend too much time on one task. But if you see the list of things you need to do, you speed up how quickly you get minor tasks done, since it's clear that there are X number of other things to do. By having all of the tasks clearly in front of you, your conception of "the whole task" changes from just the task in front of you to the set of all tasks for that day.

  • Not using these makes you just forget what needs to get done

  • The problem with forgetting what needs to get done is that different tasks may be best suited to getting done at different times / places. So you need to be able to know what all of your tasks are so that you can choose the task that is best suited to getting done at that time and place. For example, if you only have 5 free minutes and don't have a computer, you need to know all of the tasks you have that can get done in 5 minutes without a computer.

• How to:

  • https://workflowy.com/

  • One way is to use 'Outline mode' in MS Word

    • This is what Nicky showed me.

    • This has the advantage of being able to collapse each list.

• Others' experiences:

  • pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity

    • What you do is this: every time you do something — anything — useful during the day, write it down in your Anti-Todo List on the card.

      Each time you do something, you get to write it down and you get that little rush of endorphins that the mouse gets every time he presses the button in his cage and gets a food pellet.

      And then at the end of the day, … take a look at today’s card and its Anti-Todo list and marvel at all the things you actually got done that day.

Consider using the Pomodoro Technique

• What the Pomodoro Technique has made me realize is that the biggest problems I have are that:

  1. If I don't have a set deadline to finish a task, I'll drag out the time I take to do it (eg reading a book, coding a problem). The 25-minute deadline really keeps me moving as quickly as I can move.

  2. I have a tendency to get sidetracked with reading articles which aren't that important. It's like a new form of watching TV. Now that I'm thinking in terms of 25-minute segments of productivity, it makes me look at reading articles in a whole new way: I think, "What a waste to spend 2 hours on those articles! I could do four 25-minute sessions in that time!"

Paper productivity systems

Franklin planner

• Wikipedia - Franklin Planner

  • The planner pages are drilled, loose-leaf style pages in different sizes and formats. Formats have been updated through the years, but most planners contain areas for an appointment schedule, prioritized daily tasks, and notes. A key section at the rear of the planner contains addresses. Other inserts include ledger sheets for tracking finances or vehicle mileage, exercise logs, and other individualized reference materials.  Smith named his planning system after Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) who kept a small private book, as detailed in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. A core technique of the Franklin Planner system involves beginning each day with 15 minutes of "solitude and planning".

• Original Ring-bound Daily Planner

43 folders system

• 2010.03.12 - YouTube - OfficeArrow - How to Create and Use the 43 Folders System

  • Summary: get 12 folders for the 12 months of the year and 31 folders for the days of the month, and put any papers you need to refer to on a future date in either the month-folder (if it's more than 31 days away) or the day folder (if it's within the next 31 days).

  • This method seems to be totally replaced by modern technology (e.g. Google Calendar).

Frequently check in on / monitor your mental/physical state to prevent exhaustion

Try to keep your next small step (i.e. not requiring intense thought to execute) written down on a yellow sticky note or in Notepad++ to reduce strain from frequently trying to remember what you're trying to do

• 2023.09.21 - I'm working on a somewhat difficult and intimidating programming task in an unfamiliar codebase for a client and I'm finding that writing down each idea I have for my next step immediately in Notepad++ and then focusing on trying to relax while doing it slowly is helping me slowly move forward.  I have the full list of thoughts that I can review if I need to come back to the work later.

• I think about this with the same climbing analogy as when using git commits: when I write down that idea immediately, I'm putting a stake into the wall to catch me if I fall (i.e. by writing my idea for the next small step down I can always just go back and read it if I forget what I was trying to do, which is likely if I'm dealing with mentally taxing stuff).

If you notice you're feeling mentally stressed, make an effort to slow down your rate of work to an extremely relaxed and step-by-step process to reduce the mental load

• Just as I constantly mentally monitor my exertion when doing long-duration cardio to pace myself and not burn out, when programming I need to constantly mentally monitor my stress levels and pull back / slow down when too stressed to prevent mental exhaustion

Respond effectively to intrusive thoughts / distractions

Don't allow yourself to spend time thinking about / worrying about the results of your work while you're working, just focus on going through the work process

• Explanation

• Others' experiences

  • Notch:

    • "I bought a new midi controller I won't use because I gave away the old one I wasn't using."
      Someone responds: "What's the point of buying to not use the product?"
      "The false idea that if I only had the right tools I would be super creative."
      "By the way, the real trick to being creative is to not think about it, just do. You can go back and fix it later when you're in the zone."

    • I think the part about "go back and fix it later" makes it clear he's talking about not focusing too much on the results at first.

  • Ira Glass

    • ...nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me–is that all of us who do creative work, like y'know, we get into it, and we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like, there's a gap–that for the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, OK? It's not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you, y'know what I mean? A lot of people never get past that phase, a lot of people at that point they quit. And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be, they knew it fell short. It didn't have the special thing that we wanted it to have, and the thing what to do is–Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you're going through it right now, if you're just getting out of that phase, you gotta know it's totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're gonna finish one story. Because it's only by actually going through a volume of work that you're actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions. In my case, like, I took longer to figure out how to do this than anybody I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It's gonna take you awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. And you just have to fight your way through that, OK? (Source)

• My experiences

  • 2018.05.20 - I did a pair programming session with John a few days ago where I watched him for an hour as he learned Angular, and then he watched me for an hour while I worked on Rhymecraft. While working on Rhymecraft I was thinking out loud, and I was relating how anxious and stressed I felt as I was working on it, and John at one point said, "Dude, relax." And from there on I focused on just trying to relax my body.  A few days later I decided to work on Rhymecraft on my own and I focused a lot on my anxiousness and stress-level, and I just focused on making sure I was as relaxed as possible: so, not allowing myself to worry about how much more I needed to do, or how much I would be able to get done in that session, but instead just "putting one foot in front of the other" for two hours. And it worked! It was a productive two hours and I didn't feel at all stressed out while working, and the next day (today) I'm having another go at it. So: it may be a good idea to focus on your anxiousness levels and make adjustments to whatever you're doing and thinking to reduce them. It's a lot like when I was training for the marathon and would spend my time focused on how taxed my heart felt, so that I could adjust my intensity to not tire out my heart before I'd finish the distance I was going for.

    • Later: getting enough sleep could help with this.

Use a task app or calendar to schedule tasks/chores for after you finish working

• Explanation

  • If, for example, you notice you're almost out of toilet paper or water, then rather than stop working to go buy it immediately, add it as a task in your task app (I use Google Tasks).

• My experiences

  • 2018.02.01

    • For the past few weeks I've had two Google Calendars open on my second desktop, with my Notepad++ "notes" file open on the right side (of the second Desktop).  So what I do is: when I have a random thought or thing I want to file on my wiki, I instead just switch to my second desktop and put it in the "notes" file so I don't lose sight of whatever task I'm working on. I have the month-view of Google Calendar in the top-left quadrant, and the week-view in the bottom-left quadrant.

    • Open

      

Add random thoughts/ideas you want to remember to a simple text file to be filed away later

• Explanation

  • Use Notepad++ as a quick way to dump all your random thoughts so that you don't waste anymore time thinking about them.  You can always return to them later to file them away if you don't want to forget them.

• My experiences

  • I have a misc.txt Notepad++ file that I use to dump all my random thoughts into.  If I hear a good song, I'll note the name (or link and timestamp if it's part of a set) there.

Work habits of successful people

Daily routines

• Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

• 2015.11.24 - Thought Catalog - 12 Daily Routines Of Famous People In History – And What You Should Take From Each

  • no citations :/

• Ernest Hemingway

•  

  1. To get started, write one true sentence.⁣

     1. “Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.'”⁣⁣⁣⁣Ernest Hemingway

  2. Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.⁣⁣

     1. “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”⁣⁣⁣⁣

  3. Never think about the story when you're not working.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣

     1. “I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”⁣⁣⁣⁣

  4. When it's time to work again, always start by reading what you've written so far.⁣⁣⁣⁣

     1. "When it gets so long that you can't do this every day read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start.”⁣⁣⁣⁣

  5. Don't describe an emotion--make it.⁣⁣⁣⁣

     1. “In writing for a newspaper you told what happened and, with one trick and another, you communicated the emotion aided by the element of timeliness which gives a certain emotion to any account of something that has happened on that day; but the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or in ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always, was beyond me...”⁣⁣

  6. Use a pencil. ⁣⁣⁣⁣

     1. “If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof.”⁣⁣⁣

  7. Be Brief.⁣⁣⁣⁣

     1. “It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”

  8. Source

• Ben posting on WIP:

  • Personally, I didn't and don't recommend [working on a side project while working a 9-5] for people doing coding related startups that require intense concentration.

    It's very hard or impossible, or at the very least massively inefficient to produce any useful code with fragmented time blocks.

    My weekday schedule with a full time technical leadership job in big tech in NYC was:
    - Wake up at 8:30-9 AM, shave and eat small breakfast
    - First meeting at 9:30 AM
    - Work 10 AM - 8 PM with a day full of Zoom meetings and 1-1s and intermittent 15-20 minute intervals to write code which was also expected of me. I needed to lead projects with people in different timezones as part of my job expectations hence the late hours.
    - 8 PM - 9:30 PM: late dinner (I lived in NYC so I went out to restaurants a lot) or meet a friend
    - 9:30 PM - 10:30 PM: gym
    - 10:30 PM - 11:30 PM: respond to fires on Slack, finish some code I didn't have time to do during the day because I was doing too much leadership shit - or decompress/youtube/video game
    - 11:30 PM - 12 AM: shower, get ready for sleep
    - 12 AM - 1 AM: go to sleep

    Could I have cut out all restaurants, social obligations, batch cooked the same meal for the whole week and mixed in an hour or two of dev on side projects during the day and spent my entire weekend doing side projects?

    Sure, but my brain was completely fried from having a stressful job and I wasn't in the best mental position to concentrate and be creative on new startup ideas. Besides, that kind of schedule isn't sustainable and will only work for a few months max before some kind of burnout sets in.

    IMO, best to commit to one thing at a time as it relates to work. If you're employed full time, stack cash and quit when you have the right amount of runway to focus on a startup full time for a few years. Helps if you can move countries as your runway will be massively extended doing that if you come from a western country with a high COL.

    Don't try to half ass a startup while also inevitably half assing your job.

Articles / videos

• David Foster Wallace (Source)

  • Charlie Rose (CR): What will you do with that year?
    
    DFW: If past experience holds true, I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.
    
    CR: Worrying about not writing. Not: 'worrying about what to write'?
    
    DFW: Right. Worrying about not writing.

• Tom Francis

  • A thing I've got better at lately is getting a lot of work done without burning out. Here's what I'm trying:
    To avoid burnout: any time you're stuck, frustrated or distracted, be very willing to stop work and do whatever you want.
    To get lots done: any time you're not working, occasionally ask yourself if you feel like working.
    If the answer's no many times in a row, take a look at your to-do list and find something tiny, or break a bigger thing up into tiny steps. (Source)

  • Lesson I have learnt a million times but still frequently forget: always seriously consider doing the bare minimum effort version of a thing
    So often assumptions about standards it has to meet, or flaws that would be unacceptable, are obviously false when you step back a bit. (Source)

• 2017.05.15 - Twitter - Tiago Forte - Twitter thread

  • I'm increasingly convinced that THE most important thing in productivity is to end every cycle with a clear milestone or deliverable

  • TODO: Copy over the rest of it.

Particular Habits

Focus

• He that pursues two Hares at once, does not catch one and lets t’other go.

  • Ben Franklin

• The hardest thing is...When you think about focusing, right, you think, "Well, focusing is...is saying 'Yes'."  No. Focusing is about saying 'No'. Focusing is about saying 'No'.  And you've got to say, "No, no no"–and when you say 'No' you piss off people.  And they go talk to the San Jose Mercury and they write a shitty article about you.  You know?

  • Steve Jobs (The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 1997)

• The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say 'No' to almost everything.

  • Warren Buffett (Source: I can't find any website that mentions the original source.)

Break up the task into many subtasks

• 2013.03.28 - Justin Kan (founder of Justin.tv) - How to Do Anything

  • "I’ve found that when faced with a set of seemingly insurmountable challenges, the first step towards making it easier is to break things down into as large a set of small individual tasks as possible."

Don't think too much about it, just get going

• I remember when I spent two months in Spain I had some kind of epiphany at some point where I stopped caring if my grammar or pronunciation was bad, and I would just spit out my best guess. And I remember that I started learning a lot faster once I started doing that.

• Tom Francis

  • http://www.pentadact.com/2011-03-12-analysing-happiness/

    • Do what you want to be in the mood to do. You can also get stuff done that you don’t feel like doing, just by starting to do it. Your brain only resists up until the point you actually start the job, at which point it starts to focus on doing it. You do what you want to be in the mood to do, and soon you’re in the mood to do it. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s the single most useful piece of information I’ve discovered about the way my brain works in 29 years of having one.

Misc articles to categorize the advice for

• Extract the information from this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/relax-youll-be-more-productive.html?emc=eta1

• 2009.10.04 - Kalzumeus - Work Less, Get More Done: Analytics For Maximizing Productivity

  • Working Longer Hours Is Not A Competitively Defensible Advantage

  • Why Smart People Keep Falling For This

  • Poor Metrics For Productivity

    • Hours worked

  • Good Metrics For Productivity

    • Just assign an arbitrary value to tasks, based on your best guess of how much value they add for the business.  Then, track how long it takes to complete the tasks, and figure out where you’re adding disproportionate amounts of value and where you are spinning your wheels.  Do more of the former, less of the latter. When in genuine doubt about the value, guess what it would cost to have somebody else do it for you.

  • The Pseudo-Wage

    • If you want to earn $100 an hour, you’d better not busy yourself with $5 an hour tasks.

  • You’re Measuring Productivity.  Now, Improve It

  • Productivity Technique #1: Outsource.

    • Outsource anything that your personal presence does not add value to. Equivalently, outsource anything where the replacement price is less than your desired pseudo-wage.

  • Productivity Technique #2: Automate Your Processes.

    • A startup’s most important product is the process the startup uses to create products.

  • Productivity Technique #3: Eliminate Unproductive Uses of Time.

    • I use RescueTime.  If you don’t, install it today and spend some time aggressively categorizing what websites are worthwhile for you to be on.  Consider this a very, very effective process improvement.

    • Examples:

      • I used to spend much, much more time on blogging than I do currently. The shorter articles typically take me about an hour to write, whereas this article took me about four.  However, my long essays produce more traffic, more discussion, more links, and better writing than the shorter articles — and vastly out of proportion to the time invested.

  • Worker Smarter, Not Harder.  Then Go Home.

• 2010.08.25 - Kalzumeus - The Hardest Adjustment To Self Employment

• 2016.05.17 - NYTimes - Where does the time go?

Productivity Exercises

• You can do some boring, repetitive task for 5-10 minutes to get yourself used to doing a boring repetitive task (which is a lot of what success is). I got this idea while creating calendar events every 30 minutes to remind me to log my time.

Misc ideas

• When you consider what you want to get done in the next week, you may know that certain tasks are large enough that they need to go on separate days from each other, and thus it may make sense to assign a task to a particular day without having actually scheduled a time for it (e.g. "I want to play chess one day, bridge another day, poker a third day, so I'm going to add one of those to each of several different days"). So you should have "buckets" of tasks for particular days, where the tasks don't have scheduled times.

• I should really have a set daily routine where each morning I decide what I will get done that day and each evening I review what I have done that day.

• The value you add when working is the product of the importance of the task you're working on and your level of effort on that task. So it may be better to work on some lower-importance task if you'll be more motivated to work on it.

• Consider getting a log book (moleskin) specifically for tracking your time. It's too easy to ignore it when it's on your phone. It's just like when I had to take the LSAT advice to my wall so that I would be continually prompted to look at it.

• It might help to do some kind of fun warm-up exercise before you need to get work done so that you're in the right frame of mind.

  • Examples

    • Playing blitz might get you into a frame of mind of making decisions quickly.

• Set an alarm on your phone for a certain number of minutes in the future (say, 15 minutes). Use that to time-box what you're working on.

  • Source: Yang does this.

• 2016.08.22 - Agh, I've got it! I was frustrated that JIRA doesn't give me a great top-down view of what I'm working on, and it just struck me that I should use Confluence for that: have the different projects I'm working on as different pages, and then link to JIRA tickets where I can get more in-depth on how I'm solving those particular problems. The particular thing I was working on was making my WordPress mobile-friendly, and documenting on the wiki other ideas I had but didn't have time to implement now and didn't have time to create JIRA tickets for.

• 2018.04.10 - Twitter - ajlkn

  • How to ship daily w/o burning out:
    Set a finite/realistic goal for the day ("add feature X" or "implement part Y of feature X")
    Work until said goal is complete
    STOP and go outside/read a book/do something else – even if you finished early and can squeeze in more work

• Use Notepad to keep a stack of tasks

  • The current task is at the top of the list

  • As you go down the list, you have tasks that are not going to be relevant immediately.

  • Close any windows that are not relevant to your current task.

• Notes from work:

  • Close gmail for 30+ mins at a time so you don't keep getting distracted by random emails / gchat.

  • Move to one of the offices for 30+ mins at a time so you don't get distracted by noise.

  • When working on a bunch of tickets, prioritize those tickets where you need to do something so that a dataset can start running, or a csv can start being scored, or a model can be passed to a co-pilot. Only after those are done should you then work on tickets where someone is asking you to investigate why something is the way it is.

  • Keep a piece of paper or Notepad window where you list all of the model builds on your plate right now and what the next step is for each of them. This is really, really helpful for working on multiple model-builds in parallel! It makes it much easier to switch between them without getting disoriented.

  • I've been finding whistling to Magician soundtracks to be helpful to keep me in the zone.

    • I already knew that listening to house music helped me get in the zone, but it hadn't occurred to me that whistling would also help.

Wikipedia - Time management

• 2015.12.03 - A big thing to learn IMO is to separate the act of remembering that there's a particular thing you need to do and doing that thing.

  • In the past I would normally remember I need to do something and then immediately start working on it.

  • The problem with this approach is that you can end up getting distracted over and over again.

  • I think a much better technique is:

    • have a system for organizing your tasks

    • whenever you think of a new task, instead of working on it immediately, write it down and come back to it later.

    • refusing to work on it immediately may be a helpful way to get out of your old habit of allowing yourself to be distracted over and over again

Prioritization / Focus

• I think one of my major weaknesses is not having an organized method of prioritizing my efforts.

• 2015.03.07 - today is Saturday. Before I started doing anything I forced myself to write up a list of things I wanted to get done today in Notepad. After I wrote the first thing I wanted to jump in and start doing it, but I forced myself to keep trying to remember other things I had wanted to get done today. Having all of them up in front of me definitely helped me to spend an appropriate amount of time on each.

• Get the quote from Tim Ferris(?) that talks about the four boxes: urgent / not urgent, important / not important.

Being Productive with Email

2014.07.14 - Infer.com CEO Vik Singh - 3 Gmail tricks that can save you hours every week



Take 20 Minute Breaks With Fun Stuff

2014.10.17 - One thing that has been working really well for me recently is that I'll read 10 pages of a book (which maybe takes 30-60 minutes) or work for 30-60 minutes on my AutoRespond program, and then watch 10-20 minutes of a fun YouTube video on how to make games with GameMaker. The video-watching relaxes me and I think it gives my brain a break, and then I can jump back into reading / working.


From John T Reed's book "Succeeding":

Making a daily to-do list is one of the best yet simplest time management tricks. I once had an apartment complex in Fort Worth where I employed a resident manager and a half-time maintenance man. The new manager was foaming at the mouth at me. She told me there was such a huge backlog of work that I needed to hire a second full-time maintenance man for at least three months. She said the current maintenance man agreed with her. I fired her and went to Texas and took over her job while I looked for a replacement. I made a list of the stuff that had to be repaired at the complex, prioritized each item by numbering them 1, 2, 3, etc., and gave it to the half-time maintenance man. He completed all the work in about two weeks. When I asked why he had agreed with the fired manager, he said, "The previous manager never gave me a list. There was so much to do, I didn't know where to begin."

Source: John T Reed, "Succeeding" (2nd Ed) - http://www.johntreed.com/

http://hackthesystem.com/blog/why-i-hir ... ductivity/

• 2015.08.10 - AQroot - How Often Am I Interrupted?

Tools

• Lists

  • Zapier - 40 of the Best To-Do Apps for Personal Task Management

    • This looks really useful.

RescueTime

• https://www.rescuetime.com/

• https://www.rescuetime.com/premium/a-day-in-the-life

Articles / Videos

• Dave Girouard, CEO of Upstart - Speed as a Habit

  • Summary:

    • When you think about it, all business activity really comes down to two simple things: Making decisions and executing on decisions.

    • The process of making and remaking decisions wastes an insane amount of time at companies.

    • Deciding on when a decision will be made from the start is a profound, powerful change that will speed everything up.

      • Eric Schmidt made sure that decisions were made on a specific timeframe — a realistic one — but a firm one.

    • think about how important each decision is and how much time it’s worth taking. There are decisions that deserve days of debate and analysis, but the vast majority aren’t worth more than 10 minutes.

    • It's important to internalize how irreversible, fatal or non-fatal a decision may be. Very few can't be undone.

    • Speed doesn’t require one leader to make all the calls top-down. The art of good decision making requires that you gather input and perspective from your team, and then push toward a final decision in a way that makes it clear that all voices were heard.

    • He doesn't give a clear process for determining when a decision should be made.  This is actually the same question I asked Marissa Mayer and her answer made it clear she didn't have a clear process either.

    • Gauging comfort on your team is a really helpful measure of whether you’re going fast enough or not.  You know you're going fast enough if there's a low-level discomfort, people feeling stretched. But if you're going too fast, you'll see it on their faces, and that's important to spot too.

    • It’s not that everything needs to be done NOW, but for items on your critical path, it’s always useful to challenge the due date. All it takes is asking the simplest question: “Why can't this be done sooner?” Asking it methodically, reliably and habitually can have a profound impact on the speed of your organization.

    • You don’t have to be militant about it, just consistently respond that today is better that tomorrow, that right now is better than six hours from now.

      • There’s a funny story about my old pal Sabih Khan, who worked in Operations at Apple when I was a product manager there. In 2008, he was meeting with Tim Cook about a production snafu in China. Tim said, “This is bad. Someone ought to get over there.” Thirty minutes went by and the conversation moved to other topics. Suddenly Tim looked back at Sabih and asked, 'Why are you still here?' Sabih left the meeting immediately, drove directly to San Francisco Airport, got on the next flight to China without even a change of clothes. But you can bet that problem was resolved fast.

    • Just as important as assigning a deadline, you need to tease out any dependencies around an action item. This might be obvious, but mission critical items should be absolutely gang tackled by your team in order to accelerate all downstream activities. Things that can wait till later need to wait. Ultimately, you can’t have team members slow-rolling on non-vital tasks when they could be hacking away at the due date for something that is make or break.  A big part of this is making sure people aren’t waiting on one another to take next steps. The untrained mind has a weird way of defaulting to serial activities — i.e. I’ll do this after you do that after X, Y, Z happens. You want people working in parallel instead.

    • Ten times a day I’ll find myself sitting in a meeting saying, “We don’t need to wait for that thing, we can do this now.”

    • Eliminate cognitive overhead.

      • If you can knock out big chunks of a project early, you can reduce the overhead of the remaining parts by 90%. You should always be on the lookout for these opportunities.  Often, it will be one tiny element of a project that’s adding all of the complexity.

        • For example, our business at Upstart has to comply with a lot of regulations. There’s not a lot we can do until we know we’ll have legal approval, so we used to spend a lot of time dancing around whether something was going to be legal or not. Then we thought, why don’t we just get a brain dump from our lawyers saying, “Do this, this and this and not this, and you’ll be fine.” Having that type of simple understanding of the problem drastically reduced the cognitive overhead of every decision we made.

        • The one I see the most — and this includes at Google too — is that people hem and haw over what the founder or CEO will think every step of the way. Just get their input first. Don’t get your work reversed later on.

• Bart Procrastinates And Does Not Revise His Exam - The Simpsons

Journal of uncategorized observations

• 2015.05.19 - I'm finding it very effective to schedule my time via Google Calendar. In the past, if I got an idea to do something (like "Oh, I need to order more protein powder..."), I would just do it immediately. What I've been trying the past few days is to not do it immediately, but instead to schedule it for an open block of time in the evening. I've been starting at 6:45pm and scheduling myself in 15-minute increments.

Websites

• 43 Folders

Books

The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People

• Amazon

• Wikipedia - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

  • This has a pretty good summary.

• It's highly, highly recommended by Scooby: "This $8 book changed my life many years ago... it will change your life forever."

  • 2012.09.17 - Time Management For Success In Bodybuilding And Life

    • There's a really good summary of the videos at the bottom.

    • Shorter summary:

      • Lecture 1

        • You need time management to make sure your time is not wasted on things that aren't important to you.

        • If you don't know exactly what you're trying to achieve, or if you don't have a plan, you'll never achieve it.

        • 7 Habits helps you determine what your goals are and break them into small chunks that you can work on every day.

        • With this time management approach, every day you make a little progress towards your goals, and it makes you feel awesome that you're making your dreams happen.

      • Lecture 2

        • Good goals are:

          • specific

          • measurable

          • time-bounded

          • realistic

        • The book "7 Habits" provides a great way to plan your day:

          1. You begin by defining your roles.

          2. Then for each of those roles, you come up with long-term goals,

          3. and for each of those goals you break it into daily tasks.

      • Lecture 3

  • Making Goals

Getting Things Done

• Wikipedia - Getting Things Done

Time Management that Doesn't Suck

• Amazon

• Sample Chapter

  • Results-fixated thinking makes it hard to achieve things. In order to accomplish really major things, we need to ignore the final result.

• From reading the sample chapter, this guy seems to know what he's talking about, although his style is unusually informal.

Summary

The Four-Hour Workweek

• Amazon

• TODO: Summarize the tips he has in this.

Other books

• First Things First

  • Amazon

  • Wikipedia

  • This is a sort-of sequel to The 7 Habits.

• The Habitual Hustler: Daily Habits of 50 Self-Employed Entrepreneurs

  • Amazon

  • this was by Corey Breier, one of Francis Pedraza's cofounders at their task-automation start-up, "Invisible Technologies".

• Heads Up: Software Development

  • You need to write out all of the desired features for a product, estimate how long each will take to build, and then talk with the customer to figure out which are the most important to get done first.

  • You then need to work in 1-week sprints.

• Joel on Software:

  • Get away from interruptions

    • Don't keep your email / IM running. Open it every 30 minutes at most.

      • NW: This one really works.

    • Find an office / quiet place free from distractions.

    • Get into work late and leave late, so you avoid the noise.