Aim, fire, scan: the 80/20 of executing on big projects

These goal escrow sites, like stickK, beeminder are not my thing but glad they help people. Here are some other hacks:<p>1. Set your standards (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=aUck-umj2WI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=aUck-umj2WI</a>, yes it is him, but it is good.)<p>2. If plausible, release something shit &#x2F; half done. You will feel embarrassed and want to fix it up.<p>3. Just get started. Do a minute. Soon you will be in work mode, and forcing yourself to no to do it, so you can sleep at an appropriate time!<p>4. Try to do fun stuff if possible. Going to the gym is not fun, but it feels good after. But if you have a side project, make it a fun one, something you really are in to.<p>5. Habits are very powerful. Your brush your teeth, right?

Always great to see indie hackers content.<p>Since Channing mentions interstitial journaling, I want to share my interstitial journaling app called Interstitch at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;Interstitch.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;Interstitch.app</a><p>I shared it here on HN and PH and got 2 upvotes and zero people checking it out. But I realized half the problem is most people don’t know what interstitial journaling is. Many people understandly confuse it for a journaling app. But it’s closer to a time tracking app but more for individual performance than invoicing. But I assumed I was the only person who finds this useful, which was ok since I’ve been using it to set “deep work” daily goals and summarize how I spent my week so at least I use it.<p>Then the CEO of Medium somehow sees the HN post and emails me that he coined the term, but I probably heard it from Ness Labs founder that Channing links to. So then I email her and she adds me to her newsletter which has like 100k subscribers and about 100 people are now using it which is cool. Good lesson in reaching the right audience.

Wow, this is… this is amazing. I thought my system was genius only I could derive, but here you’ve got a ton of it written down, plus a whole bunch of other ideas that sound great - I love “ABZs” in particular, and the “three Me’s” is great. On that note, read some Extended Mind philosophy if you haven’t, originally from Chalmers I believe<p>Out of curiosity, do you think this is self-treatment for attention deficiencies, or just an effective set of strategies? In other words, is this a life strategy or a work strategy?

I like this post and find some of it quite helpful as a framework, but certain pieces are sufficiently vague that I actually have no idea what&#x27;s being said:<p>&quot;As a rule with few exceptions, you want to move forward through iteration loops, not backward. (Too often, moving backward is a sign of problems with doing, not problems with planning.)&quot;<p>What does that mean? a short example here would help. How do I know if reprioritizing is going backwards or a problem of doing vs. what was advised up above?

Am in between house rentals at the moment and the general concept of “commitment agreements” is one that’s been on my mind. Particularly the desire to pay 6 or X months up front for a place - maybe it exists in the commercial space but haven’t seen it for general residential agreements.<p>Some cool points made in this article thanks for sharing. It’s a bit broad and formulaic to be directly actionable in my opinion but that can be seen as good&#x2F;bad depending on the reader

Strongly agree. I think a point not explicit in OP&#x27;s article is having <i>low quality</i> initial Plans in order to move forward.<p>Logically, we want a Plan to move towards our Goal. As Engineers we often suffer from Analysis Paralysis: lots of paths to the goal with no clear winner. We also slow down from Impostor Syndrome: surely a smarter&#x2F;more talented person knows the one true Plan forward to the goal.<p>&gt; I make a plan, then do the plan, then learn from my efforts by reviewing my progress. I do this every day of the year, going on half a decade now. [At many time scales: three hour cycles going up to three-month cycles.]<p>I believe OP would agree that the Plan should be <i>low quality</i>, at least at the beginning. This encourages forward movement, and <i>learning</i>, vs just planning in circles and without using real-world data.<p>Source: writing a book on Feedback Loops

The links for the bus method, interstitial journaling, and rubber ducking all point to the same link for interstitial journaling. Also, the later &quot;e.g. the BUS method&quot; link points to interstitial journaling as well.

I always think of these loops too. I also liked the quote:<p>&quot;I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.&quot; —Bruce Lee

Why complicate things? Make a plan, start executing it, review and adjust. There&#x27;s all there is to it.<p>If you put down hours in a mindful way towards your objective, you will progress, regardless if you want to learn to play piano, discover a revolutionary drug or get rich.

Overcomplicated