How (7) is a productivity hack?
pretty indirect, the idea is to do something physically active to increase blood flow, awareness, etc.
might be more effective to wash ones face with cold water though.
Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#22Mine is pure-ironcald discipline. That, and you love to do the things that you're doing.
Everything else, work only in short term. Plus you don't need discipline to do what you love to do.
So, just make something a daily task and stick to it for at least 30 days.
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#23I've tried every productivity trick under the sun but very few things ever work for me, or at least not for very long.
The system that has worked best when I can bring myself to stick to it is:
1) Write a small paper list before going to bed of what I want to do tomorrow.
2) Tidy my room and get any work materials that I will need (which for me normally just means relevant books etc) ready on my desk.
3) Try to start work the moment I get up.
4) Record what work I do on a simple paper based schedule in 30m blocks during the day. I'm somehow less likely to procrastinate if I know that I am going to have to write down that I've done it.
Thats about it. Getting up at the same time every day and avoiding too much coffee helps too.
I seem to be able to stick to this system fairly well most of the time but when something happens that causes me to stop, then it often takes me weeks to get back on track.
Whatever system you use, just make sure it is as simple as possible. You don't want maintaining your time management/productivity system to become your full-time job!
Hope this helps ashishk
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#241. set noprocrast on HN
2. use a separate browser for Gmail
3. don't check emails automatically. Only if I think of it.
4. only read online news once during the day, at lunch, and use instapaper.com to defer articles that might take more than a few minutes to read.
5. the null default browser page is a great idea - but in the past I've taken it further, with a message asking if I'm browsing for work. I've also thought that a script displaying my current todo list or bug count, etc. would be a good default page.
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#251. 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 c…
Nice name - I once had an idea for an accountability buddy web site for grad students, called 'e-advisor'. Basically you sign up and it sends you an email every so often asking about your progress. If you don't reply fast enough, it notifies your actual advisor that you're slacking.
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#26My best productivity hack has to be the "million dollar idea list" that is SEPARATE from my daily to-do list. Every time I have an idea now, I force myself to put it on that list, and if I'm still thinking about it in 2-5 days, then I'll allow myself some time to explore it further. It has saved me hours a week. I used to explore an idea immediately for up to an hour, sometimes more, and all that time is lost because…
Just this morning I've set up a wiki for myself to help with this problem.
As ideas come in, I'll post them to the front page under "free floaters" (working on quicksilver action for that right now), then as they start to form or as I do research, I'll start fleshing out the pages for each idea.
I'm hoping the wiki aspect will also force me to look at how individual ideas might be related. I'm thinking of it conceptually as a mind map that changes with time.
I'm not sure if MediaWiki has the ability to view those relationships at a high level, but if not, I'll write something that does.
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#27Power Naps.
EDIT: And if you can, cook only twice a week, making enough for a few days. Setup coffee machine before going to sleep.
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#28Positive thinking. Every hour of every day. My productivity increases greatly when I take a break and imagine beautiful things, funny things, myself and others enjoying success etc rather than reading news online or playing negative video games (for example).
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#29A friend of mine was working in a lab, writing his thesis with 4 people who were either professors or doctors in electronics. He asked once - what is the most important thing you did for your success.
They all discussed it and agreed on this rule:
If you have 10 things to do, and you do them all in parallel, you will be done slower with ALL of them, than if you do them one after the other.
That's the biggest productivity hack - do things one after the other, and not all at once.
Re: Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks?
#30I've tried every productivity trick under the sun but very few things ever work for me, or at least not for very long. The system that has worked best when I can bring myself to stick to it is: 1) Write a small paper list before going to bed of what I want to do tomorrow. 2) Tidy my room and get any work materials that I will need (which for me normally just means relevant books etc) ready on my desk. 3) Try to start…
I like your record keeping idea. I'm going to try to that to make myself more accountable to myself.