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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

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Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#211

Post by cout »

I learned how to gamify work tasks from my mom.

She worked as a librarian in the seventies. Tasks like restacking books was not fun, so she turned it into a game. Her coworkers, on the other hand, drew out the boring tasks as long as possible. When it came time to pick someone for advancement, they chose my mom, because she was more productive at the menial tasks.

I also use post-it notes, but if I used them for everything, I don't think it would work for me. The reward is in pulling down the note and setting the wall cleaner. But if I were to add notes every day, I have a feeling the effect would be disheartening. Similarly, I love getting the living are clean, but when kids/family make a mess again within hours, I'm less incentivized.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#212

Post by borski »

heygarrett wrote: post #190
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.

I have reminders and still forget to pay my property taxes sometimes.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#214

Post by raincole »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #192
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…

>When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well. Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."

Do you do drugs?

If not then you're already 'starving' yourself of the purest form of pleasure (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). I don't think taking one step further is that sad.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#215

Post by akavel »

There's also a kind of super-cheap Bluetooth "Chinese" thermal receipt printers, also known as "kitty printer" or "cat printer". There's plenty of reverse-engineered software for printing to them in a number of languages; one I use is: https://print.unseen-site.fun/ The disadvantage is they don't cut automatically, and their "cutter teeth" are super crappy. But cheap!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#216

Post by niam »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #192
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…

>When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well. Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."

I suppose in some sense, but how is this sadder than the reality that we're not all doped up on space cocaine?

A desirable (practical) reality would seem to stem not just from first order effects now, but also in summation of all the credits and debits that it leaves us over time.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#217

Post by reverendsteveii »

hk1337 wrote: post #202
reverendsteveii wrote: post #182

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…

> and what it took was writing down each routine and tracking the weight I did last time. I think there's a huge connection to physically writing it as opposed to typing and printing. I never did anything with the weight lifting logs, I thought I might, but the most I ever did with anything in the past was looking at the progression from the last few days or weeks.

I really do think that there's something reifying about the physical act of writing it down. I think that because in one of my many stutterstepping starts into the world of weightlifting I tried keeping a log on my phone and it did all the same things that keeping a log on the wall does (arguably more, the whiteboard doesn't track historical data and can't automatically generate charts for me) but it just felt like shouting numbers into the void every day. There was no sense of job-well-done satisfaction when I hit a personal best, there was no little ceremony of removing a number from the board to make room for a new, higher number. There was just a bunch of individual workouts and I either did them or I didn't and no one cared either way, including me.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#218

Post by notpushkin »

PaulHoule wrote: post #114
fidotron wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac Stickies absolutely can be set to float above everything else, and survive power outages (battery permitting) and reboots. It is true they are tied to the Space they are in though. They also have the advantages associated with not being physical of course.

But they cover up things you might want to interact with on the screen!

I think an old e-ink reader could be the solution here.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#219

Post by Sanzig »

hbn wrote: post #145
Sanzig wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yubikey?

Yubikey does TOTP on-board, but you need to connect it to a phone or computer (no display or on-board power). It solves a different problem, where you want to have your TOTP credentials on a tamper resistant hardware security module. It doesn't solve the "don't want to carry around a phone for TOTP" problem.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#220

Post by password4321 »

vitro wrote: post #167
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…

Check this out: https://github.com/Authenticator-Extension/Authenticator

Taking the 2 out of 2FA since 2017!

Thanks for sharing a potentially useful tool but I will not use it without a lot more details about how this browser extension secures the 2FA secrets from sketchy websites/ads.

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