Ask HN: What helps you focus and get things done?

Any recommendations for music / playlist ?

Honestly, pressure. Having time pressure or pressure to perform really gets me into gear. It's not always _healthy_, but it always works.

But an almost opposite thing that has been working in the last year or so in a way that seems more sustainable is accepting that I won't be 100% at the top of my game every minute of every day. Energy levels fluctuate. Some days I need to sleep in more and work a bit later. Sometimes I'm up and working by 6am and finish early (or try to) or take a longer lunch. Sometimes I just need to go for a walk. I realized I overwork by nature, so I don't need to be afraid of getting "lazy" or not being productive: the work always gets done. I realized that allowing myself to relax sometimes when my brain is just not feeling it and make that focus up later can be very effective and produce better output. Allowing this kind of fluctuation 90% of the time and going into high-pressure mode 10% of the time seems like a good balance that I can maintain.

My trick is to get outside my comfort zone when coding, but only just enough that's it's tolerable and not overwhelming. Most of the time, even as a seasoned coder, I should feel inadequate, yet still up to the task at hand. That's what flow is for me: pushing myself, but not too far that I end up falling off the proverbial cliff!

I write down a bunch of very small 5-15 minute subtasks that I want to do - being very specific and including the estimated time to accomplish into a 1hr block.

Then I put on Brain.fm for 1hr.

That's it. Works really well for me. Rinse and repeat (I typically only have to do 2-3 one hour blocks per week for super annoying administrative tasks that I've been putting off)

Depends on what's going on.

Anxiety? Relaxation techniques.

Tedium? Find the interesting.

Something physical? Stand, change position, go for a run or walk. Eat. Take vitamin D in the cold dark winters.

Often, though, it's as simple as just... starting. One technique is to promise myself that I can stop after I go for a full 5 minutes. Usually, it's just enough to get started and then I'm in.

Once it was burnout though and nothing helped except fully not even looking at my computer for a good long time.