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Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

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Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#51

Post by jdimov9 »

qntty wrote: post #43
jdimov9 wrote: post #17

Here's what works for achieving extreme levels of hyper-creativity and hyper-productivity for me. Will it work for you? Yes. Will you do it? No, you will find endless excuses to call the below "impossible". Still, for anyone who dares, here it is: 1. Get as much sleep as you can. Consistently. Yes, it's counter-intuitive. Yes, you'll have fewer waking hours. But those few hours will be many times more productive and…

Number 6 is probably the most useful advice on the list (for me at least). I have noticed that I can only ever really work on about 2 things at once, but I never seem to learn to stop trying to do more. I'm curious if you would count your day job as an "accomplishment".

Try everything you can to get away from your day job and to some kind of working arrangement that gives you more free time.

With that said, while you are still at your day job, definitely count everything you do there as accomplishment. You can't hate your way out of a job (but you can sometimes love your way out of it).

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#52

Post by jdimov9 »

arethuza wrote: post #46
jdimov9 wrote: post #17

Here's what works for achieving extreme levels of hyper-creativity and hyper-productivity for me. Will it work for you? Yes. Will you do it? No, you will find endless excuses to call the below "impossible". Still, for anyone who dares, here it is: 1. Get as much sleep as you can. Consistently. Yes, it's counter-intuitive. Yes, you'll have fewer waking hours. But those few hours will be many times more productive and…

Are you including weekends as vacation time?

I personally don't differentiate between week-days and weekends. I often work on weekends (and probably just as often take weekdays completely off).

But generally, when I speak about vacation time in the context above, I mean it as in large continuous chunks of time during which you only unwind and regenerate (and ideally travel to some interesting place off the beaten track).

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#53

Post by arethuza »

jdimov9 wrote: post #52
arethuza wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you including weekends as vacation time?

I personally don't differentiate between week-days and weekends. I often work on weekends (and probably just as often take weekdays completely off). But generally, when I speak about vacation time in the context above, I mean it as in large continuous chunks of time during which you only unwind and regenerate (and ideally travel to some interesting place off the beaten track).

That does make sense, but I suspect most people do differentiate between weekends and vacation/holidays which explains why some comments are reacting to your suggestion when it's actually quite sensible.

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#55

Post by [deleted] »

atmosx wrote: post #24
jdimov9 wrote: post #17

Here's what works for achieving extreme levels of hyper-creativity and hyper-productivity for me. Will it work for you? Yes. Will you do it? No, you will find endless excuses to call the below "impossible". Still, for anyone who dares, here it is: 1. Get as much sleep as you can. Consistently. Yes, it's counter-intuitive. Yes, you'll have fewer waking hours. But those few hours will be many times more productive and…

Did you get that list from some TED, Accelerator Speech or a book? Because it ain't realistic for 90% of the 'population'... which means it's unrealistic and pretty much useless.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#56

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #30
atmosx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you get that list from some TED, Accelerator Speech or a book? Because it ain't realistic for 90% of the 'population'... which means it's unrealistic and pretty much useless.

Wait what? Which steps are impossible for 90% of the population?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#57

Post by raverbashing »

ivanche wrote: post #27
arethuza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say its best to try and find out what level of multitasking you can handle without becoming too stressed and/or unproductive - it does vary a lot from person to person. Once you understand your own capacity for multitasking then fight to stay in that zone (and before anyone calls something like that a "comfort zone" its more like an "efficiency zone").

Well if we are talking about true multitasking (working on more than one thing at the same time) then humans can't do that - we only have one CPU with one core, our brain. Some people can do scheduling and time-sharing well, that is they work on one thing for some time, then on second one for some time, then on third one, then they return to the first one etc. but that's not multitasking really.

"we only have one CPU with one core,"

"but that's not multitasking really."

Do you think single core computers don't do multitasking? They do it exactly this way.

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#58

Post by qntty »

spectrum1234 wrote: post #41

1- Hit the gym most mornings 2- Stand at your desk an hour in the morning and an hour after lunch 3- Always be sure you are working on the #1 priority task 4- Don't each like crap 5- Get enough sleep People underrate standing. I can literally feel my brain being more productive.

I like the standing suggestion. I don't know how many hours the average standing-desker stands at their desk but 2 hours seems like a very realistic goal.

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#59

Post by andersthue »

In my consultancy we struggled for many years with these issues which led to poor performance and low revenue/profit and missed deadlines.

For the last couple of years we have tried many different things to boost productivity, inspired by netflix, valve, linkedin and more.

This year all these things resulted in us inventing a new method (http://timeblock.com) that is more about transparency and feedback between Makers and Managers than anything else.

The method results in less procrastination, better estimation, happier Makers, Managers and customers.

Re: Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

#60

Post by rayalez »

- Buy a cheap android tablet to do all the time-wasting activities on(HN/Reddit/tv-shows), that way it is pretty easy to avoid doing any of it on your laptop, which turns it into a pure-productivity device that you use only for creating things.

- Try to find ONE most important activity to do and focus on doing that. Switching your focus between several tasks, or having to constantly decide what is the most important thing to do takes an enormous toll on your focus and productivity.

- Start to value being Lean. Aside from adding things to your life(buying physical objects, taking on projects, developing skills, engaging in activities), realize that removing unimportant things is also very valuable. I love making my life lean, it is surprisingly liberating to remove unnecessary noise and be able to focus on what really matters.

- Instead of just relying on your will power, try to align your incentives, and make the things you do fun and engaging. Will power is important, but I'm 1000 times more productive when I find an activity my brain can "buy in" into, and be completely engaged in.

- Read about the "flow" state, understanding how it works is very important to improve your engagement.

- Read about the "pomodoro" technique. I don't always use it, at some points in my life it works very well, sometimes it doesn't. But it's cool to know about.

- Track&Share is an awesome iPad app for tracking habits.

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