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Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#51

Post by skorgu »

edw519 wrote: post #12

I like to keep it simple. My list has 1 item on it. I work on that until either it's done (often) or I struggle so much with it that I decide to change plans (rarely). For the last 2 days, I've been writing a model configurator that explodes input parameters into individual objects. I probably have 8 or 9 things dependent on this (not really sure yet), so I plug away until done. Then I'll figure out the new only thin…

I phrase this as "solve the first problem" whenever I explain my functionally identical method to others. Google tells me I have stolen Tilton's Law[1], the origin of which I will endeavor to remember in future.

[1] http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/03/tiltons-law-solve-...

Edit: grammar.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#52

Post by niels_olson »

codeodor wrote: post #26
dpcan wrote: post #10

My best productivity hack has to be the "million dollar idea list" that is SEPARATE from my daily to-do list. Every time I have an idea now, I force myself to put it on that list, and if I'm still thinking about it in 2-5 days, then I'll allow myself some time to explore it further. It has saved me hours a week. I used to explore an idea immediately for up to an hour, sometimes more, and all that time is lost because…

Just this morning I've set up a wiki for myself to help with this problem. As ideas come in, I'll post them to the front page under "free floaters" (working on quicksilver action for that right now), then as they start to form or as I do research, I'll start fleshing out the pages for each idea. I'm hoping the wiki aspect will also force me to look at how individual ideas might be related. I'm thinking of it conceptu…

very similar idea here. I also run a mediawiki wiki on my laptop, and my pile of ideas is in a template I call the idea garden. The front page of the wiki is a pile of templates: to do list, idea garden, and a subject-matter-specific meta template that has two levels of links into all the other areas. Been using it for over a year now, swear by it. SVN and PHP are not cool, but it works, and that counts. BTW, what plugins are you using? I'm using

* SpamBlacklist (just in case) * ConfirmEdit (just in case) * Cite * Parser Functions * FCKEditor * Quiz

I'm getting mediawiki and plugins through mediawiki svn, and apache, php, postgres, etc, from macports. You?

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#53

Post by niels_olson »

maxklein wrote: post #29

A friend of mine was working in a lab, writing his thesis with 4 people who were either professors or doctors in electronics. He asked once - what is the most important thing you did for your success. They all discussed it and agreed on this rule: If you have 10 things to do, and you do them all in parallel, you will be done slower with ALL of them, than if you do them one after the other. That's the biggest producti…

this should be at the top of the comments.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#54

Post by byoung2 »

easyfrag wrote: post #50
byoung2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when you calculate the cost of cooking that you have to add in the time spent grocery shopping, cooking, washing dishes, the cost of the electricity, gas, and water consumed, the time and cost of disposing of the trash, wear and tear on appliances, etc. Dining out is essentially outsourcing these tasks.

Time spent on grocery shopping, washing dishes, etc. are only opportunity costs, they only cost money if you were to otherwise use that specific time generating income.

For someone working on a startup in his free time, there are only opportunity costs! If it costs $10 extra per day to dine out, that's $3650 a year. If it saves an hour a day which can be used for working on the startup, that's 365 hours, or the equivalent of 45 business days at a full time job.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#55

Post by SickAnimations »

terrellm wrote: post #15

My wife and I own two small software companies (similar product, different niches) and have a small cattle ranch. We work from our house and also have a 14 month old son. Being productive is essential for us to manage our work/life balance. A few things that have worked for us: 1) Hire someone to be on the "front lines" so you can queue your tasks while your business still has timely responses 2) Minimize switching h…

Very good tips. I have to say that bookmarking things saves me hours. I bookmark maybe five things a week and retrieve about 2-4 bookmarks a week. I only bookmark things that would be difficult to search for so it certainly saves me time.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#56

Post by yanowitz »

Modified GTD.

1. Instead of a weekly review, I assign every task a date -- that's the date I want to next think about it (either to do it, decide it's no longer important or to set a next time I want to think about it).

2. Every morning, without fail, process my inbox (Todo and email), assign dates to things, review that set of things I wanted to review that day (and act according to step(1) above) and then get on with my day. Usually, this is a ~10-15 minutes task.. This amortizes the weekly review over every day.

3. Capture any and every actionable idea I have in the same system. (at the moment, I use Things and email todos into it when I'm on the go)

I put everything in this system -- not just work items. It's all stuff-I-have-to-do-in-my-life.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#58

Post by pavs »

mmc wrote: post #25
teuobk wrote: post #14

1. Focus on one task at a time, and make a clean break when switching to another task. No multitasking. 2. Make lots of tea in the morning and put it in a thermos. The tea stays hot all day, and I don't have to go through the entire brewing process every time I want another cup. 3. Use software that tracks time spent on tasks. (I use a bug tracker with that feature.) I find it very motivating when I know I'm on the c…

Nice name - I once had an idea for an accountability buddy web site for grad students, called 'e-advisor'. Basically you sign up and it sends you an email every so often asking about your progress. If you don't reply fast enough, it notifies your actual advisor that you're slacking.

I think the word "accountabilibuddy" was taken from an episode of south park.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#59

Post by caffeine »

byoung2 wrote: post #54
easyfrag wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time spent on grocery shopping, washing dishes, etc. are only opportunity costs, they only cost money if you were to otherwise use that specific time generating income.

For someone working on a startup in his free time, there are only opportunity costs! If it costs $10 extra per day to dine out, that's $3650 a year. If it saves an hour a day which can be used for working on the startup, that's 365 hours, or the equivalent of 45 business days at a full time job.

Is cooking really such a hateful activity? I kind of enjoy it, sometimes. It can be relaxing .. sort of like programming with edible code. And chicks dig guys who can cook (not to mention that guys obviously dig girls who can cook).

Which means: cooking is probably the most effective way to use programming skills for romance :)

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#60

Post by robedw »

dpcan wrote: post #10

My best productivity hack has to be the "million dollar idea list" that is SEPARATE from my daily to-do list. Every time I have an idea now, I force myself to put it on that list, and if I'm still thinking about it in 2-5 days, then I'll allow myself some time to explore it further. It has saved me hours a week. I used to explore an idea immediately for up to an hour, sometimes more, and all that time is lost because…

I operate basically the same except I sit on an idea for 2 weeks. I cleverly named this rule "The two week rule".
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