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Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible

634 pointsby less_penguinyover 5 years ago

36 comments

frlnc_throwawayover 5 years ago
I highly recommend Jean Moroney&#x27;s blog. She digs deep into the psychology behind productivity and goal-setting. I found many unique insights in her articles. Thanks to her writing I&#x27;ve come to believe that procrastination often stems from deeper emotional issues or an unacknowledged clash of priorities (for example, when you try to force yourself to do something that you don&#x27;t, in fact, want to do, the deeper issue is that you haven&#x27;t resolved the clash between your short-time desires and your long-term goals).<p>E.g:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thinkingdirections.com&#x2F;dont-motivate-yourself-lead-yourself&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thinkingdirections.com&#x2F;dont-motivate-yourself-le...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thinkingdirections.com&#x2F;three-steps-to-following-through-on-your-priority&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thinkingdirections.com&#x2F;three-steps-to-following-...</a><p>General list here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thinkingdirections.com&#x2F;category&#x2F;time-management&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thinkingdirections.com&#x2F;category&#x2F;time-management&#x2F;</a>
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thomasover 5 years ago
Serious question: Is anything less productive than reading other people&#x27;s productivity thoughts? It&#x27;s a combination of procrastination and finding out what works for someone who is presumably more productive than you (ie: guilt).
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jedbergover 5 years ago
&gt; If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple of minutes away (better: an hour away)<p>One great hack for this is if you work from home, get up and get dressed, then go out for a walk around the block as your &quot;commute&quot; to work. At the end of your work day, take a walk again <i>in the opposite direction</i> as your commute home.<p>Even though the ploy is totally obvious, it will put your mind in a work vs play mode depending on the direction of the walk.
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toxikover 5 years ago
I would definitely recommend against having an hour’s commute to work. It is a really strong predictor for life dissatisfaction. Fifteen minutes is the number I heard to be a good balance.
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CPLXover 5 years ago
This is actually a pretty good list. Obviously it&#x27;s personal and specific to him but it gives food for thought.<p>With that said I&#x27;ve read a million posts like this and the only thing that&#x27;s ever made me feel like I had genuinely changed my perspective and understood what was happening more clearly was reading the Getting Things Done book.<p>The key insight for me is that so much of procrastination results from a lack of clarity about what exactly should be done next, and keeping a mental load of trying to keep track of everything. Separating the three basic concepts of planning, making decisions, and actually doing the work, into discrete sessions, has been a life changer.<p>I still fuck off constantly and hate myself for procrastination from time to time, obviously, but using the core GTD framework and returning to it when I stray has <i>really</i> helped.
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ulisesrmzrocheover 5 years ago
You can only do about four hours of solid work a day.<p>That is the only trick I know that really works. Took me forever to relearn to.<p>I went to school in Mexico where school is divided into two shifts, AM and PM; choose the one you want.<p>1-5:30 are my work hours unless the water around the business gets a little turbulent, in which case, I dunno, depends on if i consider you a friend or not.
Scarblacover 5 years ago
I need just one thing: a way to get rid of a bad habit that doesn&#x27;t involve changing the circumstances in which I have that habit.<p>I&#x27;m a Web developer with a mindless tic-like habit of opening sites like Reddit and HN all the time. Even a second after closing it. I can&#x27;t very well get rid of Web browsers.<p>Edit: ohh, but the tip of going to a place where I&#x27;ve never procrastinated before and sitting down to think what I actually want to do next, that doesn&#x27;t involve a Web browser. Nice.
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freediverover 5 years ago
The simplest productivity hack is finding passion. I never seen a windsurfer procrastinate. If you are truly enjoying your work and can&#x27;t wait to do it, there is nothing going to stop you.
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debtover 5 years ago
I think the biggest realization I&#x27;ve ever had is that things take time away. The sensation of procrastination happens when you feel the &quot;thing you need to do&quot; should take some smaller constrained amount of time, usually in days or weeks or sometimes months.<p>But if you can stomach that the thing may take years or even a decade, you&#x27;d feel much less like you were procrastinating.<p>In addition, if you assume that the thing will always be done piecemeal, here and there, or when you can remember to do it say like cleaning a room or organizing a thing, then that can also alleviate the sensation of procrastination.<p>The sensation tends to occur when you maintain a false belief that the things you need to get done should take hours or days instead of weeks or years.
gandalfgeekover 5 years ago
Productivity is for peasants.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.vivekhaldar.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;42828214104&#x2F;productivity-isnt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.vivekhaldar.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;42828214104&#x2F;productivity-i...</a>
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dfboydover 5 years ago
I looked at the guy&#x27;s pie charts of working time, and unless I&#x27;m reading them wrong, he _never sleeps_. He has all 24 hours of the day marked as mostly work.
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antonkmover 5 years ago
&gt; &quot;provides me with 625 minutes of work, interspersed with 275 minutes of breaks (provided my workday is 15 hours).&quot;<p>Why would you work for 15 hours? I aim for 6. No way that you can be productive for 15 hours.<p>And, do you really want to spend pretty much all your time working? I followed along and agreed with lots of the stuff, then a comment like this throws me off. I totally understand that you&#x27;re having trouble focusing if that&#x27;s a normal day.
Rainymoodover 5 years ago
This [1] comic is hilarious and I have it on my background.<p>All self-help advice is bullshit and useless unless it changes your behavior. Find what works for you, experiment, take what works, discard what doesn&#x27;t, rinse and repeat.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;5bIKcWR.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;5bIKcWR.png</a>
mrtnmccover 5 years ago
How to achieve a productive mentality seems closely tied with individual dopamine and neuroscience factors (e.g. genetics like COMT &#x2F; rs4680). Maybe these guides should be customized to 23andme results.
ssorallenover 5 years ago
RE: 11.3 Browser tab management<p>No manual, rule-based tab management ever worked for me, which is why I took over development for Tab Wrangler a while back and have been continuing to update it. Garbage collection for old tabs without me having to intervene.<p>This has been the best system for me, and it has worked well for years. Old tabs are automatically cleaned up when I haven&#x27;t looked at them in a while.<p>It&#x27;s all open source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tabwrangler&#x2F;tabwrangler" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tabwrangler&#x2F;tabwrangler</a>
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timerolover 5 years ago
&gt; If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple of minutes away (better: an hour away)<p>The notion of a commute being beneficial is weird to me. If it takes more than 5 minutes to get to work, I end up spending the time engaged in something else, which leads to me being significantly distracted when I arrive. Thinking for an hour about what to do when you arrive seems like the opposite of productivity
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WaylonKenningover 5 years ago
I enjoyed reading this. I&#x27;ve personally found it difficult to shoehorn work into the 8-5. I&#x27;ve found that I work best speaking to people face to face and formulating ideas from 9am to 12pm, and I work best putting together slides and documents from 9pm to 12am. But between the two? I enjoy going out, seeing the world, hanging with my wife, doing life activities.<p>Now that I know that, how can I fight it? Yes, I&#x27;m lucky to do a job that allows me the flexibility to be task-centric rather than time-centric, but I&#x27;m just happy that I&#x27;ve found a working model that, works, pun intended, for me.
zettatronover 5 years ago
My productivity hack is coming to terms with the fact that my life can&#x27;t, and will likely never, be as optimised as the processes and routines that I like to optimize for work.<p>There is something about the oppressive guilt of being &quot;unproductive&quot; that, for myself personally, far outweighs any of the benefits gained from being hyper-productive.<p>Although I do feel a certain &quot;high&quot; when coming off of a full 8 hours of get-$#&amp;+-done mode. I try to realize that isn&#x27;t a switch that is flipped. It&#x27;s just a derivative of my current state of mind.
NeoBasiliskover 5 years ago
&gt;Tabs have a tendency to blow up. However, there’s a natural upper limit for how much the can blow up, since at some point they overflow and you no longer have access to the rightmost tabs.<p>ahaha hahahahaha
lcallover 5 years ago
Thanks for posting this. One thing that I think really helps me is to have a reason for everything I do, better than pleasure&#x2F;power&#x2F;attention&#x2F;toys, that is relevant to both the long-term and the short-term. So I know why, and that motivates me. One problem I might have had is too much motivation and I have had to adjust, to re-balance.<p>I have decided that direction is more important than speed. I.e., making sure the ladder of success is not leaning against the wrong wall (Covey), and that we are not running in circles, or spending our lifetime on mere shiny things. What do we want to look back on after decades, or at the end of mortality? I.e., good decision-making, keeping in mind the purpose of one&#x27;s life. My purpose in life comes from my beliefs, but I think a next candidate for purpose could be joy, which I suppose comes from knowing one&#x27;s nature, and from learning&#x2F;growth, and unselfish service to others (helping them learn and grow and be well &amp; happy).<p>So, balance while moving forward well, based the above, to me is much more important than getting <i>more</i> tasks done (though I am very task-focused when I am able, because the tasks relate directly to the purpose and related specific goals). This and other things help me feel peaceful and happy (life and learning are very much a work in progress, but some things I have gratefully learned).<p>I have written more at <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lukecall.net" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lukecall.net</a> (a lightly-loading, simple site), including about development of and candidate content for maturity models for different areas of life (mental, physical, social, spiritual). Feedback welcome.
sdinsnover 5 years ago
&gt; provides me with 625 minutes of work, interspersed with 275 minutes of breaks (provided my workday is 15 hours)<p>Who the hell works 15 hour workday?
lowdoseover 5 years ago
Everyone seriously thinking about productivity is going to mention Little&#x27;s law. If a resource is occupied for more than 80% the lead time is going to increase exponential.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Little%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Little%27s_law</a>
vinceguidryover 5 years ago
Personal productivity deals in the hoary space between defining who you are as a person and figuring out the best way to move reality towards the vision.<p>If you&#x27;re not treating subconscious input with as much seriousness as humanly possible, (i.e. you&#x27;re procrastinating for a good reason, one that probably relates to why you think this thing you&#x27;re procrastinating doing is the best way to move the needle on that vision) then you will forever be living in a hell of your own making.<p>Making yourself is an artistic pursuit and should be treated with every bit as much care and nurturing as making a painting.
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joelrunyonover 5 years ago
I&#x27;ve delved into this a couple times and put together a resource on some of my thoughts here.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;impossiblehq.com&#x2F;productivity&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;impossiblehq.com&#x2F;productivity&#x2F;</a><p>The &quot;Workstation Popcorn&quot; methodology has been particularly useful to work from home, digital nomads, and remote workers who feel &quot;stuck&quot; in one spot throughout the day.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;impossiblehq.com&#x2F;workstation-popcorn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;impossiblehq.com&#x2F;workstation-popcorn&#x2F;</a>
bobowzkiover 5 years ago
Whenever I read one of these posts I&#x27;m always very curious about the age of the writer. I find my thoughts on this topic has changed a lot from mid twenties to mid thirties.
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nurettinover 5 years ago
My productivity tip is to get old. If you are too young for that, watch an old person complete an overwhelming task. Model after their resilience and patience.
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Draikenover 5 years ago
I often get surprised how deep we got hooked into the system. We tell ourselves unless we&#x27;re doing something (no matter how useless that is) we&#x27;re worthless. Everything becomes a different kind of procrastination.<p>We feel productive creating yet another CRUD app, idle game or advertisement optimization tool that ultimately does nothing for anyone but the capitalists on the top of the chain. Only to feel bad about doing anything that doesn&#x27;t generate profit to someone.<p>It saddens me that I don&#x27;t see a way out of this hole. The system has won and everyone either follows it willingly or is forced to by society.<p>If only I could be like the OP who seems to live happily in this productivity cycle without gazing into the abyss that is the meaninglessness of it all.
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naushnikiover 5 years ago
I wonder when achieving personal productivity has become a widespread problem and why did this happen.
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wizzzzzyover 5 years ago
Does the 10hrs &#x2F; day of actual working time described in the post seem exesive to anyone else? Half this time would typically be a very productive day for me and much more usually leads to a very unproductive following day.
boldfishover 5 years ago
Presumably no-one productive ever shared their life with anyone else? The best way to be productive? Work alone, as a hermit remotely, without the Internet. (tricky if you build websites)
gcatalfamoover 5 years ago
Adding to the other comments wondering about the age of OP, I also wonder if, more than how to be productive, this doesn’t look more like “how to force you to work”.
taurathover 5 years ago
Number 1 and 2 are.... incredibly validating for me, in a way that I&#x27;m not sure I could believe when talking about procrastination.
detcaderover 5 years ago
On the `Incoming.md` bit, y&#x27;all might be interested in the Markdown New Tab Chrome extension which gives a similar affordance
jamesmcnalleyover 5 years ago
Nice list, Alex. Will take a look when I’m feeling less productive.
crb002over 5 years ago
Needs to add in exercise.
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m0zgover 5 years ago
Most of the items on that guy&#x27;s &quot;todo&quot; list wouldn&#x27;t even qualify as &quot;work&quot; for me. For me meaningful work can only be accomplished in uninterrupted chunks of 2 hours or longer. There&#x27;s so much mental context, and it&#x27;s so complicated, it takes a lot of time to rebuild it. I do gnarly low level C&#x2F;C++ and assembly (for Intel, ARM and MIPS). &quot;Write a blog post&quot;, &quot;clean up one note&quot;. If I used One Note or wrote blog posts, those would just be background tasks while stuff compiles or tests&#x2F;benchmarks run.