Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
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Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
1–10 of 54 posts
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#2I think a lot of this applies to me, I have a bad habit of leaving windows open for things I am not actively working on even though I know this can really bog me down mentally. However, while I think there is a lot of value in clearing your workspace to remove friction, someone also gave me some really good advice to help with getting started in the morning that is a little bit contradictory. The advice is to leave something partially finished that you can easily get right back into it when you get back to work. Sometimes the act of starting something new can be too much to overcome first thing in the morning, and then you get sidetracked. If you leave something ready to go that you can easily do, it can help you get into work mode immediately.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#3Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result?
I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right.
For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on my weight or very subtle one.
http://kibabase.com/articles/self-quantification#interventio...
In the future, when I finish my analysis, other people might decide to replicate my experiment or comes up with their own conclusion based on the data I gathered.
Although how one could test the idea proposed in the blog is unclear to me. I like the idea of having a clean desk or clean environment though. The ugly environment in my house doesn't appears to deter me from getting things done, though.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#4This article got me thinking about places in my life where there's friction. My computer stands out as a huge source of friction. I already try to close unnecessary windows/tabs, but after reading this, I realized that, because I use it for so many different habits, my desktop fails as a friction free starting point for work.
So I've identified a few ways I use my computer and I'm setting up a user account for each one:
* coding in Ruby
* coding in Java for work
* blogs and email (and hacker news)
* personal and household maintenance
If it goes well, I'll try to write it up in a blog post.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#5I think a lot of this applies to me, I have a bad habit of leaving windows open for things I am not actively working on even though I know this can really bog me down mentally. However, while I think there is a lot of value in clearing your workspace to remove friction, someone also gave me some really good advice to help with getting started in the morning that is a little bit contradictory. The advice is to leave s…
I think leaving breadcrumbs for yourself can be a great way to reduce friction. The challenge for me has been when I wake up and I find that I've left myself a bunch of breadcrumbs for several different tasks.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#6Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on…
Just counting steps isn't very effective. You need to walk for a good long while at a time to use up your glycogen (stored sugar energy) and make your body dip into fat reserves. So if you spread out getting your steps you are less likely to do that. Similarly, there are heart rate complications. If you don't walk fast enough or throw in some interval work to get your heart rate up, you aren't getting as much exercise...
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#7If you don't want to ahem procrastinate, then don't put a picture of slave leia up on your wall.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#8Any tennis player knows this, always recenter. I think somehow the idea of automated garbage collection got to some of us programmers.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#9Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on…
Just counting steps isn't very effective. You need to walk for a good long while at a time to use up your glycogen (stored sugar energy) and make your body dip into fat reserves. So if you spread out getting your steps you are less likely to do that. Similarly, there are heart rate complications. If you don't walk fast enough or throw in some interval work to get your heart rate up, you aren't getting as much exercis…
I don't have the equipment to test your hypothesis, but I think I can test an easier one: running a mile a day in addition to doing 10K steps in a certain period of time around the neighborhood. Crude, but predictable.
Re: Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”
#10Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on…
> walking 10K steps have almost no effect on my weight
If you're going to change and track something to test its correlation to weight, please consider calorie intake instead.
10k steps is really not going to burn many calories (my marathon running friends use the "1 mile = 100 calories" rule of thumb). Additionally, many people starting cardio see an increase in appetite and if they are not already used to carefully controlling their food intake, end up _gaining_ weight.
Having known many people who have made the 50 lbs. fat loss goal you're looking at (and having cut 25 lbs. myself), a major diet change is likely the only thing that'll get you there. If you continue to take in enough food to sustain yourself at ~200 lbs, nothing short of training like Michael Phelps will get you down to ~150 lbs.