Build a Focus System for Better Work/Life Balance as a Web Developer

I feel like while all of these productivity &quot;hacks&quot; and systems (like Pomodoro) may have some merit, they&#x27;re completely unnecessary.<p>It&#x27;s really not too hard to:<p>* Work.<p>* If you lose focus, be mindful of the fact that your attention is wandering, and focus on your work again. This part takes some discipline. Discipline takes time to develop. Be patient.<p>* If you feel that you cannot focus on your work, get up and walk around. Go to the bathroom. Step outside for a moment. Take yourself out of the work, then return to your desk and immediately dive back in.<p>* Accept that you&#x27;re a human - not a robot; that 100% efficiency is unattainable; and that it&#x27;s a waste of your only life to try to attain 8 hours of productive work in an 8 hour day.<p>I don&#x27;t need a timer. I don&#x27;t need to develop Pavlovian responses to a mysterious ticking noise. I don&#x27;t want the overhead of &quot;productivity management applications&quot;. I just want to put my hands to work, until the work&#x27;s done, and then do the next thing.<p>[edit:formatting]

I&#x27;m curious how work and breaks are set up in other countries. In Sweden we have a long tradition of 2 hour work, short coffee break, 2 hour work. Lunchbreak 30-60 minutes, repeat.<p>The long break has to be latest after five hours and is not counted towards working time. You are allowed to leave the workplace.<p>The shorter breaks <i>is</i> included in your work time but has no forced length other than it has to be adapted to the workplace and rythm. It can also be 5 minutes every hour. Up to the company. The longer break is supposed to be minimum 30 minutes but I don&#x27;t think that is in the law. Unions usually recommend 60 minutes.<p>Taking a coffee break is almost mandatory, even the boss will look funny at you if you skip it. This is where you talk about the day, plans ahead and other things connected to work or life in general. While of course drinking that all important coffee which is also almost mandatory. This is where most youth learn to drink coffee, at their first job. Most likely learn how to cook it too :-)

Shameless plug for <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rescuetime.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rescuetime.com&#x2F;</a> which is probably the single greatest productivity&#x2F;focus-encouraging tool I&#x27;ve ever encountered... and all it really does is give you transparency into your own habits

Isn’t the word “Web” in the title completely unnecessary? I couldn’t see anything in the article that was specific for web development compared to any other kind of software developer!<p>Or is “web developer” used almost as a synonym for “software developer” now, as a way of disambiguating from e.g. a “brand developer” or “property developer”?

Rather than setting a timer + starting&#x2F;stopping music, I&#x27;m a huge advocate of Focus@Will[1], which is basically a combo of the items mentioned in this article: No need to select music (they have an extensive library). You just set a timer and you get a &quot;ding&quot; to start work, which is oddly effective at getting you into the zone.<p>I&#x27;ve found it also helps to build a list of tasks _before_ you start working for the day. Then you can do your focused sessions 1 after the other, without wondering &quot;What&#x27;s next?&quot;.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;focusatwill.go2cloud.org&#x2F;SH3f" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;focusatwill.go2cloud.org&#x2F;SH3f</a> (Affiliate link. I&#x27;m a happy customer and longtime advocate.)

I&#x27;ve found that <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mynoise.net" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mynoise.net</a> offers better sounds for concentration than most music.<p>Using <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brainaural.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brainaural.com&#x2F;</a> with brainwaves at about 13.5 Hz - 14 Hz also seems to help my concentration. (I have no idea whether it&#x27;s a placebo, tied to habit.)

I find it a struggle to use pomodoro in an office environment. Too many meatspace distractions. Pomodoro is best when you are working by yourself on something.<p>Of course office distractions are a problem in more than just that way. Hard to stay in the zone when things keep yanking you out.

These articles seem to popup with some frequency on HN. Can someone post their results? How has your output&#x2F;productivity changed before&#x2F;after using these techniques?

I have all notifications off permanently except for texts and calls. If something is really urgent, people know how to get ahold of me. 99.9999% of the time, tasks are async, and don&#x27;t require immediate attention.

Focus is nice, but it&#x27;ll only get you so far. Much more useful is prioritizing your work, and avoiding unnecessary work.<p>Focusing on bad implementation: a waste of time.<p>Focusing on bad solution: a waste of time.<p>Focusing on solving wrong problem: a waste of time.<p>Choosing the right problem, the right solution, and not wasting time during implementation (e.g. by spinning wheels without asking for help) will give you order of magnitude improvement. Focus will get you smaller improvements, though it is useful.<p>More here on what it takes to be productive here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codewithoutrules.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;04&#x2F;technical-skills-productive&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codewithoutrules.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;04&#x2F;technical-skills-pro...</a><p>(And my personal take on staying focused, which is a lot more about goals and less about distractions: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codewithoutrules.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;03&#x2F;stay-focused&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codewithoutrules.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;03&#x2F;stay-focused&#x2F;</a>)

These are all the usual advices for remote workers (not saying it&#x27;s bad advice, there&#x27;s just nothing novel about them). It really depends on how each person is able to manage they&#x27;re own work.<p>One a side note, about the phone thing, I read this <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;having-your-smartphone-nearby-takes-a-toll-on-your-thinking?referral=03758&amp;cm_vc=rr_item_page.top_right" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;having-your-smartphone-nearby-takes-...</a> the other day and I totally agree with it. Having my phone close, even when it is turned off, still causes some level of distraction to me. So lately I just leave my phone in a different room when I&#x27;m working and I just check it when I take a break, etc. Obviously this wouldn&#x27;t apply to, say, an assistant, who will probably <i>need</i> the phone to make&#x2F;receive calls.

My best productivity hack is: don&#x27;t try to be productive without a clearly defined goal.

Productivity is a personal journey, yet everyone who writes these articles feels they have the holy grail and everyone should know about it. Worse is that most likely a few months down the road, they could (and probably will) write a different post because everything they wrote about previously has changed. The only things which stay the same in my work environment is my text editor and maybe my chair.

idk.. every time I open a page like this I think &quot;what are they going to try and sell me this time&quot;<p>Everyone is different. For instance I have productivity phases, and non-productivity phases.<p>I have about 2-3 weeks of hardcore 12-14 hours &#x2F; day coding sprees and then I just can&#x27;t even if I try and sit there for hours, nothing good or much happens. So I do other, fun stuff, not work related, useless wastes of time. And then I see something or get reminded of something and BAM I&#x27;m back on the coding spree and I dare you to interrupt me. I order food, at most I take a 30min walk out the house for bare minimum health, but the rest of time is dedicated to getting the job done. And then... relaxation phase.<p>And something else. If my mind feels like it need to wander off, then it should. You don&#x27;t sprint all the time, you also sit down somewhere and enjoy the scenery. That wandering mind thing means you need a break and maybe should end work soonish and do fun things.

About the music, I find that noise cancelling headphones in the office are mandatory if I really want to block out distractions. Now that I work from home though, I crank the music up complete with subwoofer, which is a treat I could never get working in an office.<p>Focus music, plus great sound (w&#x2F;sub) is so effective for me.

I could <i>never</i> be productive in software using the Pomodoro technique. In order to make progress on most of the things I work on, I need 3-4 hour windows of uninterrupted focus where I don&#x27;t get out of my seat. If I was interrupting myself every x minutes, I wouldn&#x27;t get anything done.

&gt; As far as what you should listen to, I’d recommend something without vocals.<p>I highly recommend &quot;Drone Zone&quot; on <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;soma.fm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;soma.fm</a><p>&quot;Deep Space One&quot; and &quot;Space Station Soma&quot; work too.

TL;DR Pomodoro