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Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#21

Post by chatmasta »

- When you shut down for the day, leave your work in an unfinished (even uncompileable) state. This makes it easy to start the next morning, and is a good way to warm up to get back into context of the project.

- If you start the day with a clean slate, write three things you'd like to do today. Pick the one that will take the longest and do that first. This is Mark Twain's "eat a frog before breakfast" advice and I think it helps a lot.

- Install SelfControl.app and start it for 8 hours immediately when you sit down to work. No matter how in control I think I am, I'm always amazed at how my reflexes take me to some distracting website before I even realize what I'm doing. SelfControl stops this habit by blocking distracting websites and making me aware of them. (Pro tip: don't write an unblocking script)

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#22

Post by roryisok »

Jtsummers wrote: post #13
roryisok wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually a windows user mainly, but I do dabble increasingly in linux. I keep hearing about this Org-Mode. Can someone explain it to me in simple terms? What is it exactly?

Simplest use-case: It's a fancy outline mode in emacs. (NB: You can use it easily in Windows, just go to the GNU Emacs home page and download the emacs binaries, I do this for work where we're a Windows shop.) Simplest features, outlines: * This is a headline This is my content ** This is a subheading, it's been folded... * This is a headline This is my content ** This is a subheading, it's not folded More content. I…

Wow, thanks for the in-depth reply, I'll definitely check out emacs!

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#23

Post by roryisok »

throwaway26960 wrote: post #16

Changing my schedule so that my 7 hours of free time is before work rather than after work. Previously I was burnt out from work and when I got home I would do nothing but browse the internet. Also turning off the cell phone during my free time and only using a computer for productive purposes rather than website consumption. In the past couple of months on this schedule, I have read 13 books, practiced 150 Mandarin…

I wish I could do this, but I have kids. They rule my schedule

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#24

Post by roryisok »

chatmasta wrote: post #21

- When you shut down for the day, leave your work in an unfinished (even uncompileable) state. This makes it easy to start the next morning, and is a good way to warm up to get back into context of the project. - If you start the day with a clean slate, write three things you'd like to do today. Pick the one that will take the longest and do that first. This is Mark Twain's "eat a frog before breakfast" advice and I…

> leave your work in an unfinished state

this is great advice. I do this with writing, always stop with a few paragraphs to go, so you can pickup easily

SelfControl: I found an alternative for Windows called https://getcoldturkey.com/ - though I haven't tried it yet

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#25

Post by Jtsummers »

KingMob wrote: post #15
Jtsummers wrote: post #9

Learning emacs to the point that the chords are second nature and require no (or very little) thought to produce (aka, fluency). Using org-mode (other tools work as well, but particularly useful if you're fluent in emacs). Full-screen apps, or two apps side-by-side. Specifically terminal, or terminal + reference (text, websites, man pages, PDFs). This helps to force focus on the specific task at hand. My use-cases fo…

I agree with much of this, but after my own experience of GTD and watching some friends try it, I think it's poorly suited for intellectual work. Even though it talks about the 10,000 ft/20,000 ft/etc view, I think it just pays lip service to higher-level planning. What I noticed were lots of people chasing microscopic tasks and checking off to-do lists instead of taking care of the big things that make a difference.…

I can see that. GTD works for me, but I also don't try to use it to drill down deep into every project. I have used it to, say, map out learning a language using specific resources a couple times.

Like, with Rust, I put in that I wanted to go through The Rust Book. I created a project with the book's title and a link to it in an org file. I created subheadings and turned them into TODOs for each chapter. Since I use org for literate programming, I included every example in this file along with my own exploration and toying with the language.

But an actual programming project won't be done that way. At most, from a GTD perspective, I note that I want to create a CLI TOTP implementation in Rust (as an exercise project). I'll capture it at a high level so I don't create too many projects (an unfortunate habit) and not finish it. So in my GTD list of projects I'll see that I'm working on "CLI TOTP in Rust", but no more details.

The details for that go into a literate programming org-mode file that drills into the details of what needs to be done. Somewhat GTD-style, but the tasks here never make it into my overall GTD action queue or schedule.

Basically, my system is an amalgam of what works for me at different levels. Dogma is rarely useful, in my experience. Flexibility and appropriation of tools from everyone else. Experiment, recognize failed experiments, latch onto personal successes, and explain what worked or didn't for me to others to help them do the same.

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#26

Post by Jtsummers »

throwaway26960 wrote: post #16

Changing my schedule so that my 7 hours of free time is before work rather than after work. Previously I was burnt out from work and when I got home I would do nothing but browse the internet. Also turning off the cell phone during my free time and only using a computer for productive purposes rather than website consumption. In the past couple of months on this schedule, I have read 13 books, practiced 150 Mandarin…

This is good advice, if you have that control over your schedule.

What I've found, for me, is that going from home to the gym (running, BJJ, strength & conditioning, depending on the day), I come out of it physically tired, but mentally refreshed. The next few hours I can focus on other tasks pretty effectively. Part of it is the physical activity is, for me, meditative (which is itself refreshing), but also that it's totally different from what I'd just spent 8 hours doing, and was intending to spend the next 3+ hours doing.

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#27

Post by Jtsummers »

chatmasta wrote: post #20
throwaway26960 wrote: post #16

Changing my schedule so that my 7 hours of free time is before work rather than after work. Previously I was burnt out from work and when I got home I would do nothing but browse the internet. Also turning off the cell phone during my free time and only using a computer for productive purposes rather than website consumption. In the past couple of months on this schedule, I have read 13 books, practiced 150 Mandarin…

So now are you burnt out when you get to work?

Only if those tasks burn you out. If you want to learn a language, music, drawing, etc., then spending a few hours on them each morning before work oughtn't wear you out. That is, you're doing them because you enjoy them. If they become tedious, they're not work, you likely don't have a deadline, you change up that routine. Drop the music for a bit if you find yourself too frustrated by some piece or element of playing the instrument, but you still have that time, so fill it with leisure reading of a novel for a few weeks, return to the music refreshed.

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#28

Post by Jtsummers »

roryisok wrote: post #22
Jtsummers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplest use-case: It's a fancy outline mode in emacs. (NB: You can use it easily in Windows, just go to the GNU Emacs home page and download the emacs binaries, I do this for work where we're a Windows shop.) Simplest features, outlines: * This is a headline This is my content ** This is a subheading, it's been folded... * This is a headline This is my content ** This is a subheading, it's not folded More content. I…

Wow, thanks for the in-depth reply, I'll definitely check out emacs!

NP. I'll admit to being an emacs evangelist. But I can tell you what I like about it, and it's a quality you can find in other systems:

It's fully, and easily, extensible (once you learn the language, emacs lisp in this case). I use Visual Studio at work for C# projects. Extending it is a non-trivial thing. If I just want to change a simple behavior of the editor, it's non-obvious where to start, and it's probably not as easy as writing a simple 3-line function and putting it in a configuration file.

Emacs, vim, Sublime (ok, no experience with it, but it seems easy from what I've seen), and others reduce this down to:

  Create the function or functions
  Put them in a specific file or the file in a specific
  directory
  At most reload the whole editor, but more likely just
  tell it to refresh its plugins or to execute that bit of
  code
org-mode, for me, is just a very, very useful tool that covers a lot of use-cases for me, and works across each OS that I use (Linux, Windows, macOS). But it's always worth exploring to find what works for you. If nothing else, you'll have "wasted" your time learning how to use emacs, and should you find yourself "stuck" in it, you won't be lost in the chords.

Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?

#29

Post by kazinator »

chatmasta wrote: post #21

- When you shut down for the day, leave your work in an unfinished (even uncompileable) state. This makes it easy to start the next morning, and is a good way to warm up to get back into context of the project. - If you start the day with a clean slate, write three things you'd like to do today. Pick the one that will take the longest and do that first. This is Mark Twain's "eat a frog before breakfast" advice and I…

You can also do a "git commit -a" and leave it at the editor. Next day, you can warm up by describing all the changes in the detailed commit message. (The time stamp on the commit will be the time when you invoked it, not when it completes.)
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