Strangely enough, Stoicism. I try to recognize what I can control and what I can't, and I try not to let things I can't control scare me into inaction.
Other previous HN discussions here:
Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#32Learning 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…
Agree re: org-mode and GTD. I kept my GTD-esque project management and journal system in a Markdown git repo, but I've started to switch over to org-mode: no mass migration, just new material going forward and switching over what I need for my immediate projects.
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#33These are simple ones that you probably all know. I'm just writing them down for reference.
__General__
1) Flux for sleep (sleep being the 'hack')
2) Social pressure: find a community that you want to belong to and that gives you the social pressure towards goals you want to achive
__For programming (when learning a new language)__
For me, the focus is on getting as unstuck as possible. I've noticed that interactive tools help a lot with this because they show you how things 'under the hood' work.
1) Get a text editor or IDE that teaches you how to code -- only if you're new(ish) at a language. Things like Intellisense, a debugger and jumping to function definitions allow you to learn a lot more about code. For me, with Java this is Eclipse (Netbeans and IntelliJ work as well). For front-end it is Chrome developer tools (Firefox works too). For iOS this is Xcode. For node.js this was Visual Studio Code. I'm curious if there are suggestions from other people.
2) Knowing how to search on Google well. I can't really explain this yet, and it's something that's learned with the first programming language. So I'm going to ask this question on HN to see if there are people who can explain it :)
Edit, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183302
3) Finding a shell to play with.
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#34These are simple ones that you probably all know. I'm just writing them down for reference. __General__ 1) Flux for sleep (sleep being the 'hack') 2) Social pressure: find a community that you want to belong to and that gives you the social pressure towards goals you want to achive __For programming (when learning a new language)__ For me, the focus is on getting as unstuck as possible. I've noticed that interactive…
I tried flux, but I just find it irritating when the screen turns yellow. It probably doesn't help that my office has a daylight bulb
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#35Since college I've been using Moleskin notebooks (though lately Baron Fig notebooks) to manage my tasks/time one week at a time, moving over tasks every week that I didn't get done the previous week and evaluating whether I still need to have it at the top of my mind for each unfinished task. I find that it works extremely well for keeping relevant tasks in my head and only taking on larger projects one week at a tim…
I have a giant 6ft x 4ft whiteboard in my home office, and I write up everything I need to do that week. As I come and go to get tea, go to the bathroom etc, I pass it and see my progress
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#36These are simple ones that you probably all know. I'm just writing them down for reference. __General__ 1) Flux for sleep (sleep being the 'hack') 2) Social pressure: find a community that you want to belong to and that gives you the social pressure towards goals you want to achive __For programming (when learning a new language)__ For me, the focus is on getting as unstuck as possible. I've noticed that interactive…
I tried flux, but I just find it irritating when the screen turns yellow. It probably doesn't help that my office has a daylight bulb
I agree that it's irritating. However, I do feel the difference when I use flux or when I don't at 03:00 in the night (student life :D). It's mainly during very late hours that I'm noticing a difference and am willing to put up with the yellow screen, probably from 23:00 and onwards.
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#37- 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…
Sometimes I'll leave a failing test for the next day as a guide on what to start with.
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#38Changing 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
That's ok they'll wake you up 7 hours before work.
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#39Ask early if I get stuck. Also ask myselfmy and my boss if something is really needed, maybe we can get away without doing it
Re: Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks?
#40Read 'Do More' https://www.thesuccessmanual.in/productivity-skills-guide