Have you tried making the TODO list the night before? I don't do this regularly to avoid pushing myself too hard, but found it more effective.
Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
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Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#12To be honest I think it's perfectly normal. I'm very much the same :)
The only times I don't have this "warming up stage" is when I have a problem from the day previously that I somehow figured out a feasible solution in my sleep
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#13- Keep the mental work for the morning.
- Keep the physical work for the later part of the day.
- Till you had made up your mind, keep doing something else.
- We are not machines. So, as long as you are happy, you are doing good.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#14I can understand the desire to increase productivity, but I often think we too easily try to combat our nature. For example, I tend to be very unproductive for a lot of the day and then have bursts of incredible productivity during which I do more in an hour than many do in half the day. I tried to fight that, but realized that the way my brain works is I map things out in my mind in almost an unconscious way, I mull…
Great advice! Especially with taking mental note about need for break, I will take that advice!
My main problem is to get into the flow, once I'm there I'm able to maintain it.
I have days where the flow is so great that I sit whole day with code and be productive until the very end of my work day. I love what I do and those days power me up in such way that I just leave my desk and I'm so much easier to live with at home... That's what I want every day :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#15Thank you everyone for your responses! I was thinking about rationalizing this , and also about effect of my work that matters rather than hours sited at my desk, and also that human beings are not machines. My goal was to park all non-work time and spend it with family, playing chess to get into the flow feels like non-work time... Maybe what I wrote feels like exaggerating but it comes from my other thoughts I had…
sorry for the soft approach, but I don't think the answer is "don't waste time", I think the answer is "be a bit more friendly to yourself".
I understand your goal is to be as productive as you can, but I don't feel talking yourself into anxiety and burn-out will get you what you want.
As you very rightly say, a human is not a machine.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#16One weird trick: leave some code NOT compiling or with failing test or runtime error. Come in, reproduce the error and you’ll be back in it quickly!
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#17I also struggle with getting up to speed quickly in the morning, and find myself looking for distractions. One thing that helps is to reread the description of the story I'm working on. Compile the project again, look at what's still wrong, and think about what you were working on the day before.
Not giving in to distractions is still hard, though. It's a matter of willpower, but maybe also tricking your mind. Distract it from the unproductive distractions with some productive distractions.
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#18Relevant, you are not alone:
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#19Divide and conquer. Achieving small increments will fuel motivation for further work and also makes it easier to start. If your first task is, say, put your headphones on with music and do the build then you are more likely to just do it. And once you are there with your usual setup it's easier to just switch on. Routine helps, and with your morning wake-ups you are already on good tracks!
Re: Ask HN: How do you make your warm-up time shorter
#20I recall Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that he was the only one smiling in the gym. People would ask him why he smiles through all that pain. And he said that every rep brings him closer to his goal as Mr Universe.
It's not a wonderful goal, not even something his father was proud of. But it's a goal he kept in mind, every day, through every rep.
People are most motivated when they feel in control. It doesn't have to be actual control - studies show that even predicting a coin flip makes paying attention to flipping coins a lot more interesting.
A TODO list is half the job. Many people take a list, do what they can, give up on what they can't. The list does not give them control; and in fact it demotivates because it makes you feel helpless.
Visualize your plan. It might be worth taking some time to do this. Yes, it might increase warm up time, but you'll be able to go faster and finish faster, and it's not dead time. If you can't spare the time, you can still visualize while in the shower or on the drive to work.
Phelps would mentally visualize his race each night and then just play it back during training and during the race: http://www.behaviouraldesign.com/2013/10/07/how-michael-phel...
At the end of the day, review your plan. What went wrong? What should you have done differently? If you have no idea what happened, you could even break it down into scientific method - hypotheses and how to test them.
Remember, you don't have to execute the plan perfectly. You just need to convince yourself that you have increasing control over your day, and that should go a long way towards motivation.