41–46 of 46 posts
I'm sure this idea will help some people become more productive. Not people like me, though. Maybe I just get easily distracted, but I make small deals with myself when working through a mundane (but important) task. Deals like: - "15 more minutes and you can get a coffee". - "You can't look at HN until 4pm". - You get the picture. A clock helps immensely with this. Sometimes a task feels like it's taking forever, bu…
I'm sure this idea will help some people become more productive. Not people like me, though. Maybe I just get easily distracted, but I make small deals with myself when working through a mundane (but important) task. Deals like: - "15 more minutes and you can get a coffee". - "You can't look at HN until 4pm". - You get the picture. A clock helps immensely with this. Sometimes a task feels like it's taking forever, bu…
For those that have a hard time keeping commitments like yours: "You can't look at HN until 4pm" StayFocusd for Chrome is incredible. It has boosted my productivity tenfold.
Something that I would add to that is have someone you trust change your Facebook password (for the day, the week, until the weekends, however long). If you're like me, it's not uncommon to log in ~5-10 times a day just for a quick check. Doing so interrupts your flow the same way diverting your attention to an upcoming event does. However, when you get in the habit of not even being able to check it, that distractio…
Perhaps all those souls brave/stupid enough to try this should all meet back up in a week to discuss? :) We can share stories of missed appointments and accidental late nights into the early hours, before we realize the time and disappear off to bed cursing the OP :D
I use XMonad as my tiling window manager, and I make judicious use of the "toggle struts" shortcut. When 'docks' set themselves up at the edges of the screen they define 'struts' (which are the areas that they intend to use) so that normal windows can avoid them. Then they are toggled off in XMonad, the tiling manager reclaims that portion of the screen, allowing the currently displayed windows to cover the docks. Th…
Some time ago I took a few steps to remove all unnecessary clutter: - replace all desktop icons and docks with Launchy - remove all system taskbar icons - activate the GMail labs "unread counter on favicon" - trim down the browser to its bare basics I'm quite pleased with the results: http://oi53.tinypic.com/nmc4nr.jpg It makes my brain happy.