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Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#11

Post by zackattack »

caffeine wrote: post #8
byoung2 wrote: post #4

1. Outsourcing tasks that don't require my specific involvement to my offshore team. 2. Dining out instead of cooking. It is not much more expensive to dine out, but it saves me time (grocery shopping, cooking time, cleaning time). 3. Roomba. I will never vacuum again. Ever.

It's unhealthy, though, isn't it? I have a hard time finding places that are healthy, fast, tasty and cheap all the same time. Whereas I can quickly cook healthy cheap and tasty meals.

I would love to hear a few of your recipes for healthy cheap and tasty meals that can be prepared quickly.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#12

Post by edw519 »

I like to keep it simple. My list has 1 item on it. I work on that until either it's done (often) or I struggle so much with it that I decide to change plans (rarely).

For the last 2 days, I've been writing a model configurator that explodes input parameters into individual objects. I probably have 8 or 9 things dependent on this (not really sure yet), so I plug away until done. Then I'll figure out the new only thing on my list.

I've tried every conceivable "productivity hack" and nothing has worked as well as this. I have scratch pads, paper on the wall, 20 colors of markers, and all kinds of automated tools for scheduling and planning. I've varied my diet, my exercise routine, my daily routine, and almost anything else I could vary, and none of it really mattered. All it ever really did was take focus away from the real task at hand.

Just identify your critical path, remove it, and repeat forever.

I started with this and fine tuned what worked for me:

http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

Other inspiriation:

"I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one." chess master Jose R. Capablanca

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#13

Post by byoung2 »

caffeine wrote: post #8
byoung2 wrote: post #4

1. Outsourcing tasks that don't require my specific involvement to my offshore team. 2. Dining out instead of cooking. It is not much more expensive to dine out, but it saves me time (grocery shopping, cooking time, cleaning time). 3. Roomba. I will never vacuum again. Ever.

It's unhealthy, though, isn't it? I have a hard time finding places that are healthy, fast, tasty and cheap all the same time. Whereas I can quickly cook healthy cheap and tasty meals.

Not at all. Living in California makes it easy...there are a lot of health-conscious options for dining out in LA (my favorites are Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai food), and all chain restaurants are now required to provide nutritional content for the whole menu.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#14

Post by teuobk »

1. Focus on one task at a time, and make a clean break when switching to another task. No multitasking.

2. Make lots of tea in the morning and put it in a thermos. The tea stays hot all day, and I don't have to go through the entire brewing process every time I want another cup.

3. Use software that tracks time spent on tasks. (I use a bug tracker with that feature.) I find it very motivating when I know I'm on the clock.

Actually, it seems like there's a entrepreneurial opportunity here. Maybe a service where a representative checks in on the client from time to time to make sure that the client is staying on task. Kind of like a for-profit "accountabilibuddy."

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#15

Post by terrellm »

My wife and I own two small software companies (similar product, different niches) and have a small cattle ranch. We work from our house and also have a 14 month old son. Being productive is essential for us to manage our work/life balance.

A few things that have worked for us:

1) Hire someone to be on the "front lines" so you can queue your tasks while your business still has timely responses

2) Minimize switching hats throughout the day (marketer to programmer to customer service)

3) Avoid computer distractions - Remove programs from dock (use QuickSilver instead) - Remove notifications (menu bar items icons, widgets, growl notifications) - Remove bookmarks bar from Safari and FireFox - Remove email notifier and only check 1-2x a day and when you are ready to answer them

4) Plan ahead by creating tomorrow's ToDo list today

5) Separate Google Reader feeds by subject and only read specific subjects when wearing that hat

6) Stop bookmarking URLs and saving code snippets - it will probably be out of date by the time you need it (assuming you can remember where you saved it)

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#16

Post by jwecker »

In addition to other suggestions, I would suggest the pomodoro technique if you're in an environment where you deal with reactive/disruptive work mixed in with focused work. http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

Depending also on the variance of your work- if there is work that requires lots of contexts (phone-work vs. appointments vs. programming vs. design...) there's always Getting Things Done (GTD). I would also recommend GTD if you deal with lots of incoming data-streams, paperwork, or if you are generally unorganized.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#18

Post by deltaqueue »

caffeine wrote: post #8
byoung2 wrote: post #4

1. Outsourcing tasks that don't require my specific involvement to my offshore team. 2. Dining out instead of cooking. It is not much more expensive to dine out, but it saves me time (grocery shopping, cooking time, cleaning time). 3. Roomba. I will never vacuum again. Ever.

It's unhealthy, though, isn't it? I have a hard time finding places that are healthy, fast, tasty and cheap all the same time. Whereas I can quickly cook healthy cheap and tasty meals.

You're exactly right. Dining out is an insignificant cost increase unless you're eating healthy (at which point the gap widens). Granted, this is entirely a function of how much your time is worth...

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#19

Post by dejv »

I wrote some kind of todo/task list management sw for myself: it is just task prioritized by some factor, one task displayed one time, with some browsing functionality.

It works for me, I am using this system for more then one year and love it.

Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?

#20

Post by deltaqueue »

byoung2 wrote: post #13
caffeine wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unhealthy, though, isn't it? I have a hard time finding places that are healthy, fast, tasty and cheap all the same time. Whereas I can quickly cook healthy cheap and tasty meals.

Not at all. Living in California makes it easy...there are a lot of health-conscious options for dining out in LA (my favorites are Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai food), and all chain restaurants are now required to provide nutritional content for the whole menu.

Definitely not the case in Texas (yet); although, Austin is better than most cities over here.
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