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I think the lesson here is that some people put their craft at the center of their life and make it the focus of every single day.
But life is not job or software development and you shouldn't sacrifice it to computer programming even if it is a passion and you love doing it.
One day you will leave this world: will you regret you should have worked more or will you regret you didn't live your life?
I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average. Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME:
- Learn & use GTD - life changing. I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen & paper
- Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools
- Use your calendar efficiently - block time for reading, playing, OSS or whatever
- wake up early
- excercise (i don't do too much but the days I do, I feel great)
- keyboard shortcuts for everything
- look for productivity tips for whatever tools you are using.
- turn off facebook and distracting material
- monitor your time - I use rescue time
- outsource as much as you can. I use fancyhands.com to handle things like calling the phone company, cable company, making appointments and so on. It saved me tons of hours of BS tasks
- I have had some success with the pomodora technique as well, give it a shot.
- Don't work more than 8 hours a day
- Work from home as much as you can
- don't burn out
- for side projects, blogging, oss or whatever it is you want to do, i find it better to do 1 or 2 hours a day than try to crank 8 hours on sunday.
- spend time with friends and family - it's amazing how your productivit improves when you are refreshed
- take a power nap or naps
- sleep well
I am married with infant twins so I try to be as efficient as possible with the limited time I have infront of the computer. 1 hour of highly focused work yields more output than 4 hours of distracted, half-ass work.
forgive the self promotion but I think it is relevant. I put together a free ebook about mac productivity tips - might not be as helpful for techies like you but you might at least learn a trick or 2 or find an app that you never heard off - www.bestmactips.com
I suggest you read Coders at Work if you haven't already. It is a good compilation of interviews with living legends of computer science and famous software projects, and the interviews give insight into how each approaches his/her life. You might find some of it inspirational and insightful.
The answer, then, is to find a way to work on these projects in the course of your job. That's what I do, and my best guess is that that's what the people you've heard of do as well.
Find some project that your employer really, really needs, get permission to open source it, and spend your most productive waking hours on it.
Here's the answer you are looking for: https://github.com/sindresorhus/ama/issues/167 and you can search more related questions in the issues.
Thanks for asking this. I have always wondered the same and I look forward to the answers. I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average. Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME: - Learn & use GTD - life changing. I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen & paper - Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools - Use your calend…
Thanks for asking this. I have always wondered the same and I look forward to the answers. I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average. Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME: - Learn & use GTD - life changing. I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen & paper - Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools - Use your calend…
What's GDT?
Thanks for asking this. I have always wondered the same and I look forward to the answers. I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average. Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME: - Learn & use GTD - life changing. I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen & paper - Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools - Use your calend…
What's GDT?
Thanks for asking this. I have always wondered the same and I look forward to the answers. I am not as prolific as many of the people you are probably thinking of but I am slightly above average. Here are a few things that WORKED FOR ME: - Learn & use GTD - life changing. I use omnifocus but you can do it with pen & paper - Automate as much as you can - checkout keyboard maestro and many other tools - Use your calend…
What's GDT?