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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

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Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#151

Post by taeric »

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…

And what about those of us that find they have stretches where they don't focus well on anything? Games included. There are several games I'd like to spend a bit of time on. It ain't happening.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#152

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#154

Post by myst »

taeric wrote: post #151
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…

And what about those of us that find they have stretches where they don't focus well on anything? Games included. There are several games I'd like to spend a bit of time on. It ain't happening.

Sleep until you can’t take it anymore. In less than 12h something will appear more interesting than sleeping.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#155

Post by ajuc »

I like this simple model. There's 2 variables:

- pleasure

- achievements

Both reset daily. Both can be changed by each activity.

Well-being is calulated sth like this:

    def wellBeing(pleasureNow, pleasureSoFar, achievements):
        return pleasureNow/(pleasureSoFar+pleasureNow) + len(achievements)
It's weird, but it's how it works. If you did 100 small things it feels like you achieved much more than if you did one big thing.

And pleasure experienced is scaled by the pleasure experienced that day so far. Which means if you do 3 things that provided 1, 10, 100 pleasure - you'll experience ~2.8 pleasure, but if you do the same things in reversed order 100, 10, 1 - you'll experience ~1.09.

So ordering the pleasures and splitting the achievements matters A LOT for your well-being.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#156

Post by datameta »

I've found that having tasks last 10 minutes is an activation energy economizer (with option to extend 2x10 or 3x10 if in flow). It also simplifies the overhead of deciding how long something should take. I think the key takeaway from it all is that one would benefit most from iterating on their system of choice, keeping what works and carrying it forward, instead of doing impassioned rip-ups or switching to entirely new systems frequently

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#157

Post by zoom_enh4nce »

I've implemented something similar (but digital-only) which has been working for me lately. I have a script running continuously that monitors my Obsidian files for new due tasks, and whenever it detects one due today, it sends it to my notifications server. Now I have a notification for each thing I need to do today, which I keep up on my device(s) until I've completed the task, and then I clear it.

I am a compulsive notification-clearer so this mostly works for me. But I also have a receipt printer and have thought about doing something like this before, so I appreciated the ideas in the article! Maybe I'll rip up some scrap paper and try it that way (or just send the tasks to my printer instead of my notifications server, haha).

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#158

Post by coliveira »

pmarreck wrote: post #77
laurieherault wrote: post #2

Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.

The thing with the different columns of tasks broken down into subtasks could be replicated in any columnar filesystem view that opens the contents of a folder into a new column when you click on it, meaning every folder is a to-do!

Exactly what I thought, if you have macOS, just create a folder and use the columnar view.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#159

Post by coliveira »

PaulHoule wrote: post #59
fidotron wrote: post #44

It's increasingly strange how psychologically different something is when it's physically in front of you vs a representation of that exact same thing on a particular sort of display, especially given apparently some representations of activities on the display are addictive, while others become repulsive. As I mentioned yesterday I'm hearing more from people that attempt to avoid screens as much as possible, and thi…

It's not the skeumorphism but this: I might have 5 virtual desktops and 3 different web browsers and each of those has 4 windows open and each window has 20 tabs. Never mind the terminal windows which themselves participate. Conventional thinking is that if you can't find things you need to download and install some new program, maybe one that splits your tabs into "subtabs" or maybe one that organizes your virtual d…

Correct. Computers are the realm of procrastination because there are so many ways work can hide and so many forms it can morph into. If you need to work from paper, there's not much you can do other than move through it. It may get disorganized, but it is still there. There is no question that modern workers have exponentially more reason to procrastinate than workers from 50 years ago.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#160

Post by petemir »

genezeta wrote: post #139
laurieherault wrote: post #2

Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.

Just so you know. Offtopic but rewarding your article on Firefox on Android, there's a slight misalignment on the side. The left side gets cut off about 5-8 pixels, I'd say. It cuts off most of the first letter on every line. It might be just my phone, of course. But I don't have any particular extensions installed or anything else.

fyi I tried on my Android phone with Firefox and I don't see the problem you mention. Perhaps some additional display specs may be useful? My screen is 6.67" with 1080x2400px (20:9, 395ppi).
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