Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?

1. Define your working hours and stick to it. Setup alarms and go to work at same time of the day every day.

2. Designated working place - If you are working from your home, try to setup a place in your house that you will use only for work. Don't use it for anything else. The way it worked for me was when I got to that place, I used to switch into work time mode and when I got out of it, I will switch back personal time mode.

3. Log your hours - Use something like toggl to log your hours for yourself. Track your working hours and if you are falling on the short end, you will make up for it by working on weekends. But eventually you will try logging consistently your work hours.

In the end, its matter of creating a habit.

As you have noted, the lack of an external structure is a big one. Here's what I do...

First, I map out a long-term timeline, which is generally a season (spring, summer, autumn, winter). I identify goals, objectives, events, etc., and map them out in a simple open source PM software package.

Second, each week -- usually late Friday afternoon or Saturday -- I take the broad project plan stuff and create a more detailed plan for the next week.

Finally, at the end of each day I write a very detailed list of things I am going to do the next day. This includes work stuff, but also anything else: chores, exercise, etc.

When I get up in the morning, I look at my list for that day, and tackle it. Round about 5:00 pm I review the list and make the next day's list, and at 5:30 I treat myself to a Manhattan and some good music. Then it's dinner and whatever.

I also journal my work-related stuff in iPython notebook, and I keep an accounting of my hours in an Excel spreadsheet.

All that keeps me focused.

It's also important to provide yourself some relief. When you first start working like this, you realize how much time is spent at a normal work place not really working. In a normal work place there are meetings, water cooler chats, and so on. So it's important not to think that you must be productive for eight solid hours a day, because in most work environments you aren't. I plan on some reduced amount of productive time, and factor in what I call buffer time. After, say, 90 straight minutes of work, I might take a 10 - 15 minute walk around the neighborhood just to clear my mind and get my blood flowing.

That's what works for me.

TL;DR: Make a detailed daily list of things to do, and do them. Balance the list, and reward yourself at the end of each successful day.

I love my work, but wouldn't want to do it every waking moment. Also sometimes I hit a difficult bit of work and find it difficult to focus as I'm not progressing as quickly.