If you're a gamer at all, http://habitrpg.com uses a system to gamify tasks, and may work for you! I don't use it for work things since I don't work from home, but it's been great to help me with other things.
Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
61–70 of 126 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#62Lock your office.
Unplug the web.
Fire up your editor.
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#63Two apps helped me best: http://lift.do and SelfControl. Use SelfControl to block all the time wasting sites; Lift for reinforcing beneficial habits/routine such as exercise, eat healthy, meditate.
Work wonders.
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#64It's a tough one. I made a collection of tips and stuff here: http://procrastotherapy.com/
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#65Many people have already recommended exercise, but I would advise you not to jog or lift high rep.
Why? It's repetitive and time consuming. It also doesn't do anything for your testosterone level.
If you're a guy, you have to keep your testosterone high and that means short burst of high intensity exercise.
That's the #1 priority. It will increase your willpower and ability to cope with stress. It'll also lessen the pain of social isolation.
You're going to be socially isolated no matter what. Working at a coffee shop doesn't matter because you'll most likely won't spend your time talking to people.
Testosterone will also keep you from packing on the fat, which is really easy to do when you work at home.
My solution to this is eating healthy and stimulants.
Caffeine and nicotine patch will reduce your appetite significantly. I feel no desire to snack between meals.
It will also keep you focus and motivated. They're much more sustainable in the long run than prescription stimulants.
Lastly, take fish oil and vitamin d3. This is not optional. Most people's diet don't contain enough fish oil, the inflammation will bring on depression and sap your mental strength. Same for vitamin d3, most of us aren't exactly outdoor creature.
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#66I find adding my to do tasks to my calendar assigning time blocks to specific tasks makes it much easier to just do the work and much harder to waste time.
Another method is assigning a specific amount of time to a task. And setting a stopwatch and taking a break when that time is up prevents me from taking more time than needed for projects.
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#67Formerly self employed here. One trick that worked for me, which was inspired by some book w/ a tomato on the cover...
1. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
2. Work until the timer goes off.
3. Take a short break, 5 minutes or so.
4. Repeat :)
What I did was determine how many hours I wanted to work total, usually 40 hours. Then I'd shoot for 80% efficiency, so I'd try to work hardcore for 32 hours. Divide 32 hours by 25 minutes (32 * 60 / 25), and I'd work that many blocks of time.
I found it really helped me focus. It also helped me separate my work time from personal time. It also... well, it helped a lot.
You can play with the numbers to find a pattern that works best for you.
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#68Been working from home from the end of 1999 on and off up until the middle of 2012. 1) This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGg1567fzTY (almost posted anonymously). Deal with it :) 2) If you have a family or a partner. Just because you are at home does not mean "can you just put on a wash". Build rules into engaging with the family. You are working. You are not to be disturbed. If you choose to 'come out' of your offi…
Have a separate work space dedicated solely towards working. You don't play there, you don't eat there, you work there. It's important to have boundaries when working from home.
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#69One thing to note is that being self-employed doesn't mean you need to work from home. I always had trouble staying focused at home, and since I have kids working from home is almost impossible for me. I now rent a desk in a shared office, and I work regular hours. I work 9-4 four days a week. I leave my laptop at work, so I can't do anything except answer the occasional email from home (when the kids let me). It mak…
Leaving the work laptop at work is great advice!
For those whom this isn't practical (like me) I have found that having two computers - one "work" and one "fun" - can serve much of the same purpose.
(Obviously, the "fun" computer could also be a netbook, tablet, whatever)
Same idea, really -- the idea for me is to create a computer that I strongly associate with work, so that sitting down at that computer means, "Hey brain... it's work time, dammit."
Re: Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person?
#70Maintaining self-discipline while being self-employed is related to but not quite the same as maintaining self-discipline while working from home. My advice would be to achieve clarity on which of those two is really the issue, and if it's the latter, then do one of two things:
1. Find a co-working space and go there to work.
2. Failing that, mark the start and end of your work day in some semi-formal way. When I was managing a team of people working from home I instituted the following policy, which seemed to work really well: when you decide it's time to "show up" for work, send an email to the team saying, "I'm in", and a one or two sentence description of what you're working on that day. When you're done for the day, send another email saying, "I'm out" and another one or two sentence description of what you actually managed to get done. Just that little bit of structure made a huge difference. If you don't have a team, then collect a group of other self-employed-working-from-home people to be mutually accountable to. Even just sending such an email to yourself might help. The act of actually writing things down activates different neural pathways than just thinking about things and so makes a difference in your mindset.