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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

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Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#181

Post by daveter9 »

Sanzig wrote: post #108
al_borland wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pe…

[dead]

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#182

Post by reverendsteveii »

my receipt printer is a whiteboard in the gym. I went from "I do some scattered, random assortment of lifts when I feel like it" to "I have 3 routines I cycle through every day" and what it took was writing down each routine and tracking the weight I did last time. Checking off my daily workout is my pulling a ticket down off the chore kanban. Every once in a while, as I get stronger, I get to "take a number off the board" meaning I've surpassed that amount of weight in my routine (eg: after a few weeks of doing 25 pound lateral shoulder raises I'm able to bump my routine up to 30. if no other exercises use 25 pound dumbbells I can erase the 25 off the board). That's my "dumping out the jar". It's worked for 2 years, I've gone from being at best a dilettante in this space to losing 50 pounds, gaining the ability to bench press my weight and, and this is the important part, I feel good about my body for the first time in my forty years. I think the difference is that it's several gameplay loops at once. The short loop is "do today's workout, get today's dopamine pop", the medium term loop is "let me see if I can work out more days this month than last month" and the long term loop is "let me see if I can get strong enough that 30 pounds is trivial for me". With those multiple, simultaneous loops there's a variety in the (ephemeral, immaterial, entirely made up and internal) reward that stops it from becoming meaningless. I think OP's system has a parallel structure: the two reward loops are completing a ticket and emptying the jar.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#183

Post by laurieherault »

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.

I also think, like petemir, that it is a width issue. What model do you have?

Thank you for your comment! It is super helpful.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#184

Post by m3kw9 »

laurieherault wrote: post #146
m3kw9 wrote: post #116

For creative tasks this won’t work, the issue is with the many branching direction and dependencies each new idea creates that affects the system. I’m having great difficulty with this

I am a developer and I actually struggle with this myself. That is why I use the app I showed in the video in the article. When I get stuck on a task, I break it down into smaller tasks. But at first, I only write basic logical steps. I do not try to plan my whole day in advance because that usually leads to failure. And if something is really hard to plan ahead, like doing research, I can create 5 minute tickets.

Yeah I do the time “ticket” concept for this, I create a timer. But I do have hard time jumping to create these tasks.

To me I sometimes see past these patches for my problem, which is a pain threshold that I need to resist running away from when facing a complicated problem, and why is there pain at all? It all becomes a math equation where you have a better thing to do vs the one you are doing and how to rework your mind to calculate it differently

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#186

Post by ValdikSS »

Sanzig wrote: post #108
al_borland wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pe…

Flipper Zero supports that

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#187

Post by laurieherault »

adamsilkey wrote: post #68
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.

I loved your article! Thank you so much for sharing. Fellow procrastinator struggler here. What's been working for me lately is carrying a Field Notes notebook everywhere with me combined with some of the ideas you talk about here (breaking down tasks into smaller and smaller pieces). It's the perfect size for me to carry around every day. It's also been helpful as I've been defaulting to opening up my notebook as my…

Thank you for your comment. It is so important to be able to resist the temptation of a bad distraction.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#189

Post by laurieherault »

hyperific wrote: post #40
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.

I just picked up a used thermal printer to try it out myself and I'm looking forward to the release of the code. I did notice that on mobile the left edge of text on your website is cut off by about half a character. Also I liked how reading the article was its own game loop with progress bar, level up notifications and items! I hope you use that on future posts!

I will probably release the software as source-closed, but if you need help making a custom script, feel free to email me (you can find the address in the footer of my website).

What phone model do you have? I suspect the screen is on the narrow side.

Yes, I am even going to make a real little game to show that you can get absorbed by a very simple game if it uses the gameplay loop and multiple feedback mechanisms correctly.

Thank you for your comment!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#190

Post by heygarrett »

dackle wrote: post #80

This reminds me somewhat of a system by David MacIver: https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/using-a-list-to-manage-exec... He builds his list from scratch every morning. The list is flat, so as you go about your day and subtasks occur to you, they are added to the list without explicit links to the main task. I thought it might be risky to start with a blank list, because something important might be forgotten. But it tu…

> If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.

As someone with ADHD I’ve never found this to be true. I often forget to eat. I’d forget to file my taxes without reminders.

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