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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

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Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#101

Post by aaronbaugher »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #53
laurieherault wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally understand! Just for this article, I restarted it 12 times! What really made a difference for me was starting very very very very very small, with almost no ambition. That is truly the most important point in my article, but I am not sure if I managed to communicate it clearly. The idea is really to say something like: my goal is to write for 5 minutes, and if that is too hard, I do 2 minutes. And if I mana…

Yup, I'm familiar, I've tried it, but my brain is somehow unable to treat the small accomplished tasks as separate from the larger task. It still costs me the same "percentage of willpower", if you will, as I would have spent tackling it as the first step of the larger task. And once the willpower runs out, it's out. With video games it's not that different. What keeps me playing aren't the small rewards. If small re…

Yep. Right now I'm trying to start an instructional video series. I know that I need to break it down into tasks and sub-tasks, and I've done that. So I could go pick a sub-task off the list, like "design a thumbnail image," and just work on that. But as soon as I think of doing that, the entire project looms over me, and I freeze up thinking about the whole thing, including even thoughts like "What do I do in 6 months if I'm out of ideas and I have paying subscribers expecting new content?"

I don't know how to zoom in mentally on a tiny, manageable task and block out the rest. I'm usually unable to start on any part of a project until I can comfortably hold the whole project in my mind.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#102

Post by ambicapter »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Time to get a “work” phone.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#103

Post by laurieherault »

aaronbaugher wrote: post #93
sirwhinesalot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you found a method that works for you, and as a fellow small-time blog author I can say I quite enjoyed reading your post. Sadly, I've tried the task breakdown stuff before and it hasn't helped. It's not even just the fact that I procrastinate doing it, but that even when I manage to do it, it makes no difference. Anything that requires more than a one off "session" of intellectual work is doomed. Even if I…

Nothing helps me procrastinate like trying out a new trick, a new tool, a new list-making method, etc. I've killed time on dozens of different solutions, and some of them were pretty good at getting me to focus and work hard on implementing that new method, but none translated much into getting more actual work done earlier. Nothing really helped with that until one day I realized I was getting too old to keep being…

I totally recognize myself in your comment!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#104

Post by Helmut10001 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

I often trick myself imagining life is a game that throws boring or difficult tasks (boredom often equals difficult ) at me that I need to survive. It often helps because I I can picture finishing these things as rewards that help me get to the next "level". It was particularly helpful getting beyond difficult times (many bad events coinciding). Not sure if this can be transferred to others, or if it works because of my brain chemistry.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#105

Post by Void_ »

orangebread wrote: post #98

I truly appreciate how well thought out this post is. However, it's one of those things where if you didn't have motivation in the first place, it's not going to work. I've tried atomic habits. I've tried different ideas from social media of grouping rooms and things into piles to sort. Sure, I'll get it done... eventually. But no amount of gamification will motivate me to put this much effort into habitual cleaning.…

What helps me is to set up "morning routine" with tasks such as:

- get up with alarm - make the bed - shave - take vitamins - read 5 pages

Checking off 10 small tasks right in the morning sets me for a productive mood.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#107

Post by jvanderbot »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

You should try a CLI-based workflow for 2FA. As long as you can exfiltrate the secret (and you often can by pretending you can't scan QR codes), then you can use oathtool to generate passcodes.

1. use 'pass' to save the secret: 'pass edit work.secret'

2. use oathtool to generate 2fa given a secret:

' #!/bin/bash

oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" >&1 '

use it like '2fa work'

If you have 'xsel' you can even do

'oathtool -b --totp "`pass show $1.secret`" | xsel -ib'

to copy it to clipboard automatically.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#108

Post by Sanzig »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Hmm. I wonder if there would be a market for a super simple TOTP authentication device with an e-paper display. Kind of like those RSA tokens with the LCDs, but more modern and able to hold any number of TOTP credentials.

Getting the credentials loaded could be a bit of a pain without a camera for QR code scanning. Easiest solution would be via Bluetooth to a companion app, which you would probably want anyway for periodic time sync (likely wouldn't be worth it to embed a GNSS receiver just to update the time).

Probably be a pretty small market, but as a niche Kickstarter device? I could see a small but loyal customer base.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#109

Post by radnor »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

For Windows, here's a free little authenticator app that lives in your system tray: https://github.com/richard-green/Authentiqr.NET

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#110

Post by thenaturalist »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Get a Yubikey or similar, have a USB port close, one finger tip, done.
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