Apart from the product itself, what has been your experience with Firebase along the way and what were the main decision drivers towards Firebase?
Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
61–70 of 89 posts
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#62Great idea. Was thinking less about procrastinating and more about how it keeps ongoing projects steady. It's really buggy though.
Is there an opt-in mailing list I can sign into to get updates on it? This isn't usable for me right now but I can see it being sufficiently useable in the future.
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#63I generally prefer simpler, bullet point, plain text lists. The more complex my to-do list system is, the more I actually end up procrastinating (by spending so much time focused on the list itself). I remember a story from the Frog and Toad children's book about Toad losing his list and being unable to get anything done the rest of the day because he couldn't remember if it was on the list or not.
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#64You kill procrastination by making everything fit in a meaningful larger context. This is much harder than making it fit on a calendar.
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#65I generally prefer simpler, bullet point, plain text lists. The more complex my to-do list system is, the more I actually end up procrastinating (by spending so much time focused on the list itself). I remember a story from the Frog and Toad children's book about Toad losing his list and being unable to get anything done the rest of the day because he couldn't remember if it was on the list or not.
I do something similar - used virtual post-its, a file synched on SVN and later git, now to a google sheets.
Habit works. Use whatever you can make a habit.
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#66I've found that methods like this don't actually help me avoid procrastinating. The key for me is to remove the psychological barriers to starting a particular task. I think Getting Things Done has a good approach by dedicating time to figuring out what the Next Actions are for any given task / project. The idea is that it is way easier to start on a task if what's listed is a concrete action. For example, you might…
> The key for me is to remove the psychological barriers to starting a particular task.
Agreed. And one solution is, as you say, writing down a concrete action. The task is suddenly something you can hold in your head, and easily completely mentally.
Procrastination, at least for me, happens whenever I can't see an end to the task, usually because I haven't properly defined the task. As soon as there is a well defined set of steps to take, it suddenly becomes much easier to not procrastinate.
Procrastination is my brain's way of telling me it's not happy with the plan I've made, and that the goals I've set need to be re-written to be more achievable (in particular, more SMART [1]).
That said, projects like this are great, and definitely help with enumerating and planning!
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#67I love this idea. I don't know how many weeks I have drawn out on graph paper to accomplish the same thing. Thanks for sharing it. That said, here's some cold feedback of my first 10 minutes:
First Screen
- "How much time do you think you have on an average weekday," and all days of the week are displayed.
- No indication of what to do. Decide to hold my breath and start clicking.
- Animations prior to signing up show +/- controls to alter values. But I discover I have to type numbers into these fields.
- I click on the + to add a plan, and then click in the Untitled Plan field. Placeholder text remains, where I expected it to disappear on focus or keydown.
- In creating a new plan, I enter Time to Complete and Minimum Session values. I then click "give breaks" and those values are reset to default.
- Values reset to defaults when choosing a new color, as well.
- The color option should differ from previously selected colors. (Though it is nice that previously selected colors are indicated by a white dot in the palate.)
- I just realized you have to click the "done" button. Maybe the values could be stored on blur?
- It's not clear what follows creating plans. In fact, I was stopped in my tracks at this point and was about to give up until I started clicking in the day columns.
- I could swear I said I had 2hrs on each weekday in the first screen. Yet I only have 1hr allotted to each day in plan allocation mode.
- My plan minimum time does not seem to be honored when I click on the + button. Indeed, looking at the plan it has reverted to defaults. Maybe I didn't hit the "done" button when configuring this attribute? In fact, the time to complete also reverted. This is too much work for me right now.Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#68I don't see how this differs from a normal calender in terms of killing procrastination? The problem I have is not that I haven't planned correctly, it's that I do not follow my plan.
Interesting way to manage time (irrespective of the fact that this will not solve procrastination) Would be better in the form of browser extension or desktop app for better tracking time.
So that you have to start the browser in the first place? Not a good move to avoid spending too long with the browser.
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#69I like this, but a nice idea might be to add an unknown time to completion. For example I like to get myself to have at least an hour a day working on studying. So it'd be nice to just put this as 2 chunks instead of "50*5+however much I want for the weekend".
Re: Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit
#70Really good idea. I have a feeling it will not work for me, here is why:
I learned that to make things work, you need to schedule them, put them on calendar. However hard this is for me, I do that. Most of the time, I have to spill over a lot of things I would think I can do in a day over 3 day period. Majority of the time, even 3 days are not enough. So it keeps me honest. At every second, I know exactly what I need to do, and what I am avoiding to do.
It took me a while to get into that system. I suspect others have their own and it would be hard for them to get into this new one.
Having said that, I wish you best and will keep an eye.