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How I got to 200 productive hours a month

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Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#61

Post by programbreeding »

gazarullz wrote: post #48

For those people that manage to get up pretty early, 4-5 in the morning, how do they cope with the weekend and what kind of weekend schedule do they have ? What time do they usually go to sleep and what is their noon daily pattern (weekday and weekends). Most importantly how do they spend their time after 7pm during workdays and weekends ?

This is probably longer/more detailed than you wanted but here it goes. I'll preface it by saying that I think I'm lucky in that I'm not the type that needs 8h of sleep every night. I usually start waking up naturally after 6h-7h, but I can regularly go weeks on end with 5h-6h. The plus side is my body is very good at letting me know when I'm not getting enough sleep, and I pay careful attention to that. While I actually wish I could sleep even less, I value it greatly and know how important it is. But I don't force myself to get 8h if my body wants to be up.

I'm up at 5am M-F using my alarm. I do my usual routine of showering, getting dressed, feeding and playing with my dogs, etc and I'm on my computer by 6:30am.

I usually spend about 30m drinking my coffee and watching some quick (but informational/educational) youtube videos or reading on HN/reddit/etc; this gets my brain ready to work. This is what I'm doing right now while I type this.

At 7am I'll start my actual work. How my workday goes varies by the day, but I'm always done by 4pm.

If I am working on a personal project at the time (I'm usually trying to better myself in some way; learning a new programming language or getting better at one I already know is the most common thing for me) then I'll do that until around 5p. From 5p-6p I'll wind down and do some more redditing or something similar. Something that is a little mindless but again, usually informative in some way.

Around 6p-10p is spent with my girlfriend doing whatever. Usually we cook dinner together but other than that it's just whatever we feel like doing that day. I do my best to stay off my phone and such during this time.

I'm typically heading to bed by 10:30p and asleep by 11p. Having a good night time routine is very important. I don't go up to bed until I'm actually tired, and I follow the same routine when I do. I am usually fast asleep within 10 minutes of putting my head down.

If at any point I start to feel tired or burned out then I don't change my routine much, but I'll spend more time doing things like watching random youtube videos or reading on here than I do normally. Every so often I have to totally disconnect and just work on some home projects. Doing actual work with my hands has been a great rejuvenator for me.

On the weekends I don't set an alarm but I'm usually up by 7am. This is a combination of me waking up naturally, or my dogs waking me up because they're wondering why I wasn't up 2 hours earlier to feed them.

My girlfriend typically sleeps until at least 9a-10a on the weekends so I'll spend those first few hours doing the same things I do from 4p-5p during the week (working on personal projects, learning a new programming language, etc). If it has been a particularly tiresome week then I'll just watch tv or do something else that doesn't require my actual attention.

Starting in the early afternoon on the weekends my focus shifts to my girlfriend and whatever we have to / need to / want to do. Could be the usual chores that come along with owning a home, or running errands, or going out to some event. Bed time on the weekends is just whenever I feel tired. It's almost always later than during the week, but not by too much. I'm usually heading up to bed around midnight or 1am on the weekend

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#62

Post by nurettin »

mbrock wrote: post #26

TL;DR: Basically getting up early and doing 4 hours of deep work has changed my life from really stressful and bad to really productive and nice. One thing really fundamentally helped me, as someone who works from home on a large project in an asynchronous 100% remote organization. I work on a fairly involved project that demands a lot of hard work. At the same time there are other things I want to get done: some adm…

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior.

That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#63

Post by davymac »

tome wrote: post #46
kobeya wrote: post #8

> Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some task. This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places. But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag for adult ADHD, which is a serious and ofte…

To add a counterpoint to all the apologetics, ADHD as a cause rather than as a symptom is a point of view dominant in the US and not shared by most of the rest of the world. If you're inclined to take drugs to try to fix it then so be it, but you might want to try behaviour change first. [FWIW this reply and "advice" is not directed at the parent, kobeya, but is a general point of information.]

Learned inattention is different from ADHD. The whole world has learned innattentive behavior at this point. This can be solved without medication fairly simply. ADHD or as Dr Russell Barkley calls it, Executive Function Disorder, is neurological in origin. By all means try behavior changes first, like you said, but if that works, it was never ADHD to begin with. Finding a youtube video of Dr Russell Barkley was a godsend for me.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#64

Post by Loic »

syllogism wrote: post #53

When I read the article I was thinking there was actually something quite simple missing from it. I found that just measuring the number of productive hours per day was enough to be very helpful in breaking some bad habits, because it made me mindful of how I was spending my time. I was going to suggest the Qbserve tracker for this --- then I saw that that's actually your app! I guess you didn't want to plug it more,…

I have been using the Hamster time tracking application for the past 5 years (Ubuntu/Gnome3).

It works very nicely, you can export everything as XML and you can query the database with Python. I am using the XML export to generate static work logs for my customers and the Python bindings (dbus) to generate some special efficiency stats for me.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#65

Post by davymac »

tylersmith wrote: post #31
kobeya wrote: post #8

> Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some task. This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places. But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag for adult ADHD, which is a serious and ofte…

I have the same issue due to depression and Lexapro has helped immensely. The negative feelings persist but the motivation and lack of apathy toward work has been greatly improved.

I take Lexapro with Vyvanse. Fantastic combo. The persistently negative thoughts just turned off. I try to take "medication vacations" for tolerance and I can tell by the end of the 1st day the shitty thought patterns come right back in a hurry. It's incredible. The self-loathing and obsessive perfectionism (including having to correct everyone on everything, and not being able to be wrong without getting angry) has nearly completely vanished.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#66

Post by exergy »

tome wrote: post #46
kobeya wrote: post #8

> Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some task. This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places. But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag for adult ADHD, which is a serious and ofte…

To add a counterpoint to all the apologetics, ADHD as a cause rather than as a symptom is a point of view dominant in the US and not shared by most of the rest of the world. If you're inclined to take drugs to try to fix it then so be it, but you might want to try behaviour change first. [FWIW this reply and "advice" is not directed at the parent, kobeya, but is a general point of information.]

> "Not shared by the rest of the world"

And that is their loss. ADHD is very much a cause whose impact goes far beyond just procrastrination. It causes people to be terrible spouses who are never there when they are needed. It causes lost friendships through blinkered social conduct. It causes persistent self hatred and anxiety and depression.

"you might want to try behaviour change first"

This is such a, forgive the harshness, ignorant way of thinking about ADHD that it makes my blood boil. Behaviour change works when the person in question has the capabilities of making that change stick. This is the equivalent of telling a handicapped person to try b-mod to climb the stairs.

It. Just. Won't. Work. A shortage of persistence cannot be solved through more vigorous exhortations towards greater persistence. Here's how I think of the drugs. The drugs lay the platform so that I can implement the behaviour change. They don't let me study better. They let me start studying in the first place, at which point, all the best practices and behaviour modifications can come into play.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#67

Post by michaelmior »

nurettin wrote: post #62
mbrock wrote: post #26

TL;DR: Basically getting up early and doing 4 hours of deep work has changed my life from really stressful and bad to really productive and nice. One thing really fundamentally helped me, as someone who works from home on a large project in an asynchronous 100% remote organization. I work on a fairly involved project that demands a lot of hard work. At the same time there are other things I want to get done: some adm…

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior. That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

I prefer not to pay my bills automatically because it doesn't take much time and lets me make sure they are correct.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#68

Post by amigoingtodie »

michaelmior wrote: post #67
nurettin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior. That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

I prefer not to pay my bills automatically because it doesn't take much time and lets me make sure they are correct.

Plus, you can more easily switch banks.

Provision and migrate accounts with Ansible?

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#70

Post by apexalpha »

michaelmior wrote: post #67
nurettin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior. That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

I prefer not to pay my bills automatically because it doesn't take much time and lets me make sure they are correct.

You can still check if they're correct if you do it automatically though. You can just cancel the tranfer.
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