Loud techno music and noise cancelling headphones.
Any recommendations for music / playlist ?
Not techno, but classical music for when you're on a deadline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PUHBL1vMNY
Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
21–30 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#22Doing small, easy things first. It's contrary to the common 'wisdom' of 'getting the hard stuff out of the way first' because doing small incremental steps keeps the small dopamine hits going and gives a sense of accomplishment to maintain motivation.
I also recognized that for me the chief motiations killers are all kinds of "security" measures being put in place by more and more tools, services and organizations. There is no better way for my flow to die than having to yak shave for three hours some kind of security token rigmarole before getting to the actual work. This is why I no longer work for a large company and don't want to be anywhere near the production systems. I'm happy to delegate that shit to people who thrive on this (and to my astonishment there really are people who get their kicks from configuring complex webs of scripts to keep the environments humming). So I guess, my other piece of advice is to figure out what saps yuor motivation and find roles and activities that don't involve doing a lot of that.
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#23Deadlines / other people waiting on me.
Changing settings (can be as small as switching from couch to table).
If it's something boring, putting on YouTube at the same time so my whole "attention space" is filled despite the tediousness of the task.
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#24I use a noise app to play rain sounds, and also regular music or ambient music.
The best ones I have found are:
lifeat.io
https://somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/dronezone
Or just Spotify.
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#25Doing small, easy things first. It's contrary to the common 'wisdom' of 'getting the hard stuff out of the way first' because doing small incremental steps keeps the small dopamine hits going and gives a sense of accomplishment to maintain motivation. I also recognized that for me the chief motiations killers are all kinds of "security" measures being put in place by more and more tools, services and organizations. T…
Right, getting into the groove by starting somewhere, it could even be unrelated such as doing the dishes and folding some laundry. Crossing that off the list gives enough dopamine to move on to other tasks. The trick is keeping the momentum and tempo so find ways to not allow yourself to be distracted once into the zone. At work I put on headphones on with some music. It's interesting that music is always never distracting me.
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#26My personal drill sergeant
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#27Like a lot of the comments here, I respond to pressure and deadlines, but that's not everyday.
The way I see it is anyone who's hyper-productive and focused day in day out, is either lying or miserable and heading for burnout.
I work best in the mornings, so I do the harder stuff then. Afternoons are a grind, fortunately the way my schedule works out is that's usually when my meetings are.
I work best when I'm working with, rather than against my natural flow. I find in the long run, there are only so many productive hours in the day and pushing through that produces poor results slowly.
If I really need to get shit done and it's not happening, I find pomidoros work well for me, but only for a few cycles to get me moving.
I can also recommend turning off the computer. Some of my best work lately has come either after a huge walk, or from sitting down away from the screen with a pen and large sheet of paper.
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#28People here have suggested starting with small/easy stuff to "get in the groove", I agree with this. Another thing is deliberately leaving syntax errors before leaving work for the day at the locations in the code where I'm supposed to start the day after.
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#29I block certain sites like Hacker News in the Windows hosts file. I have to put in a little effort to undo it which provides just enough resistance to keep from it
Re: Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?
#30An in-situ todo list in every tool I use. In slack: scheduled messages, email: todo folder, git: todo.txt and so on. I no longer fight context switching and focus on getting things done in an organised way every time I switch context to a new task.
To write complex code while I am procrastinating or context switching I have taken to writing in plain english what I want to achieve and then write code. It’s cheaper to get all the bad ideas out in plain english while making reasonable progress.