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Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

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Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#61

Post by bluejellybean »

hluska wrote: post #36
dualogy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So out of curiosity, in your case, was this overworked + crappy diet + lack of physical activity, or was this overworked + healthy/balanced/junk-free diet + some modicum of regular physical activity?

It started as a spiral of being overworked and not sleeping enough. As I slept less, my coffee consumption skyrocketed and my diet grew worse and worse. I tried to exercise three times a week, but between being tired, mild stomach problems from too much coffee and unhealthy food, and energy spikes, my intensity in the gym slipped and I eventually started skipping more workouts. It all spiralled because all of those t…

>mild stomach problems from too much coffee

This is a problem I've ran into in the past but on fairly severe scales. I was drinking at least 2 pots (~24 cups) of coffee per day and ended up in the hospital a few time due to stomach problems. I've sense limited my consumption of coffee and switched to pure caffeine pills (mixed with water) and my quality of life has improved quite dramatically. Gone are the constant bathroom trips and stomach issues! Obviously reducing the overall caffeine intake is extremely helpful as well but coffee as the method of ingestion is just not good on the body.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#62

Post by moron4hire »

There is a bit of a selection bias at work. You don't get to see the years from when they were struggling punters like the rest of us. You also don't get to see the things they try, fail at, and then discard. You don't see how long it took them to make the thing, not in a real, emotional sense. If anyone paid real attention to how long projects really take to make good at the start of their projects, they'd never start. That's why so few people manage to start writing books: we have expectations of how long a book should be, we don't really have a good understanding of how "much" a program should be.

But it's also about organization and daily progress. A lot of my friends consider me to be extremely productive, but I think of myself as a terrible procrastinator. The reason they think I'm productive is because--in comparison to the zero effort they put into their purported side projects--I'm infinitely more productive than they are in doing just a few small things every day.

But all of that is just descriptive of What it looks like to be productive. Keeping a whole program in your brain is What you do when you have committed to being productive. Writing lists of tasks is What you do when you want to be productive. Getting up early is What you do. It's not How you get to that point. Even if you are stumbling through a project, having to constantly look up documentation, you're still being infinitely more productive than the 90% of people who don't do anything.

When you say, "I want to be that thing...", you necessarily have to also say, "... that means I will stop being this thing." I don't watch television. I don't follow professional sports. I don't work out at gyms. I don't read the latest books. I don't go to the latest movies. I don't play video games. I don't have a bowling league.

I code. I solder. I photograph. I draw. I write.

I decided at some point in time that I would make my life about creating things more than consuming things. Okay, yes, I do sometimes watch television, movies, sports, read books, work out, etc., but I do them with the frequency that other people remember to write on their nascent blogs.

You get to be productive when you decide to stop being antiproductive.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#63

Post by darkr »

candu wrote: post #23

This sounds counterintuitive, but: learn when to take breaks and step away from problems. Some of my most productive hours have been spent walking through parks, coming to crucial realizations or designing approaches that end up saving me days (or even weeks!) of wasted effort. Along the same lines, the best advice I ever received was from an old music teacher: do less, better. Also: if you think "delegating" and "ma…

I find this helps a lot. Many a time I've been banging my head against a problem for hours, only to realise the solution later on when I'm cooking dinner or taking a shower.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#65

Post by dpc_pw »

hluska wrote: post #4

In 2007, I finished my bba, received an angel investment, and started a company. Three months later (and with my investor's enthusiastic support), I started a non-profit street magazine. About two years later, I ended up in hospital with stroke symptoms and blood pressure on the 'how are you alive?' end of the scale. Because of this, I beg anyone who wants to be as highly productive as I was to please take care of yo…

Thanks for your comment. It scared me a little and gave me a perspective. First thing: I hope you're all doing OK now and your health improves.

I'm a bit envious of all the great hackers getting plenty of nice Open Source projects done (mostly Rust community, because that's what I'm into). Secretly, I would like to be a open-source-star-developer, but I can't see it ever happening...

Between dayjob, family-time/babywork (newborn son) I squeezing any time I can get for my hobby Rust projects, and I still feel like I don't get much done.

I eat OK, drink just two coffies a day, but maybe I should get more sleep, slow down and hit the gym...

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#67

Post by hadley »

henryw wrote: post #32

I've read some wonderful responses, especially nostrademons's. I don't see "minimizing technical debt" on the page yet, so I would like to mention it. This would require discipline, having grasped some/all of the overall picture, and foresight/planning.

I think it's more important to understand the pros and cons of going into technical debt. It's much like real debt: sometimes, by taking on debt in the short term, you can spring board yourself to a better place in the long term.

Ruthless eliminating technical debt would be like living life without credits cards, a mortgage, ...

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#68

Post by ismail »

I am not like any of the people you described but here is what is working for me:

1. Make a list of things weekly that need to get done

2. Daily pull from weekly into your list for the next day

3. Be careful how you word your task list. Focus on process over outcome. This is a little hack to avoud procrastination. Example: spend an hour refactoring (process) x vs refactor x and fix failing tests (outcome)

4. Figure out the #2-3 critical items.

5. Timebox/pomodoro

6. Sleep, wake up early & eat your frogs in the morning

When i do all of this i am able to get a whole lot more done.

Also grab the book a mind for number. There are some interesting insights in productivity.

I have tried GTD etc but have found that for me this process works.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#69

Post by pgeorgi »

pyre wrote: post #54
blakeyrat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you end up with something like Git, which is easy to use if you have the exact same background/education/philosophy as the person who wrote it, but has terrible usability for pretty much everybody else.

I don't have the same background as the "person that wrote it," and I consistently find the git command-line tools easier to work with than other tools (SourceTree, magit-mode, vim-fugitive, etc [1]). I think that in this case, it's just the mental model of a DAG[2] of commits that people have trouble wrapping their minds around. The tools are just there to help you slice and dice the DAG. [1] I haven't used Tortoise…

There are more DSCM implementations based on a DAG. (for example git, mercurial, bzr, monotone, codeville, fossil)

The only one that draws serious usability complaints all the time is git.

Re: Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

#70

Post by pyre »

pgeorgi wrote: post #69
pyre wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the same background as the "person that wrote it," and I consistently find the git command-line tools easier to work with than other tools (SourceTree, magit-mode, vim-fugitive, etc [1]). I think that in this case, it's just the mental model of a DAG[2] of commits that people have trouble wrapping their minds around. The tools are just there to help you slice and dice the DAG. [1] I haven't used Tortoise…

There are more DSCM implementations based on a DAG. (for example git, mercurial, bzr, monotone, codeville, fossil) The only one that draws serious usability complaints all the time is git.

To be fair, some of the usability complaints aren't about the interface so much as things like:

* Unreasonable ideas about the idea that commits/history can be rewritten, so therefore "nothing is safe."

* Arguments over how some git commands are similarly named to svn commands, yet don't do the same thing. The svn way is the 'right' way, and git is 'doing it wrong,' but really it's just an argument about familiarity (sharing many traits with arguments over Mac vs. Windows keyboard shortcuts, for example).

* Complaining about a recoverable error because they don't know about the reflog.

* etc.

I'm sure there are legitimate complaints, but most of the complaints that I see are around things like that.

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