Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 634 posts

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#51

Post by netaustin »

Having not thought about it at this level, the feedback loop explains why my Bullet Journal works well for me. I can write down any task and break it down to any level of detail without worrying about software, which is nice, and I get a nice little reward when I cross off a bullet. I have used post-its in this way in the past and found that it's more effective than the bullet journal if I need a real kick in the pants. Also I move around a lot between home, office, and work trips. While post-its don't travel well, the phone apps just don't work for me.

When I need to coax my kids (7 and 10) into completing a tedious list of chores, like cleaning their room and playroom, practicing their instruments, and doing their homework, I also reach for the post-its. They each get their own color and we talk through the best way to break things down, arrange them in a backlog on the wall, set a timer, and agree to meet when the timer goes off to review our progress.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#52

Post by rozab »

cocothem wrote: post #45
laurieherault wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think having a tangible task is really important! Since I’m in Europe, we don’t really have paper with bisphenol anymore, but that’s not the case everywhere.

What about the ink? What's the keyword to search for nom toxic printer ink/cartridge

Receipt printers don't use ink, instead they use thermal paper which darkens when heated. You can test this by scratching it with your nail, the heat is enough to leave a mark

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#53

Post by sirwhinesalot »

laurieherault wrote: post #34
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…

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 rewards were enough to keep me going I'd play pacman all the time. The only thing that keeps me going is curiosity.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#56

Post by lionpixel »

This idea really resonates. Like others have mentioned, there's a unique power to a physical artifact that a digital to-do list just can't replicate. I went down this exact rabbit hole a while back, trying to bridge the gap between my digital planning and physical, actionable "tickets." The setup part can be a bit of a pain, especially getting a printer reliably online and talking to it from different apps and services. This is the exact problem I built Printercow¹ to solve (author here!). It's a small service that lets you turn any thermal printer into a networked API endpoint with a one-line install command on a Raspberry Pi. The idea is to handle all the backend plumbing so you can focus on the fun part—triggering prints from Zapier, a script, or your own app to create a system just like the author's. Happy to answer any questions about the setup!

(¹) https://printercow.com

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#58

Post by swah »

lionpixel wrote: post #56

This idea really resonates. Like others have mentioned, there's a unique power to a physical artifact that a digital to-do list just can't replicate. I went down this exact rabbit hole a while back, trying to bridge the gap between my digital planning and physical, actionable "tickets." The setup part can be a bit of a pain, especially getting a printer reliably online and talking to it from different apps and servic…

See also https://github.com/NaitLee/Cat-Printer

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#59

Post by PaulHoule »

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 desktops into "virtual superdesktops", etc. Trouble is now you have another thing to find with all your desktops, windows, and tabs! You just can't win that way even though people insist that you can.

Paper, however, is privileged because it lives off the desktop. It doesn't disappear when you switch tabs, it doesn't disappear when you switch windows, it doesn't disappear when you switch virtual desktops. You can tape it here or there and it stays there even through reboots.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#60

Post by haswell »

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…

I don’t think the issue is a lack of skeuomorphism. It’s more that the devices we use can’t replicate the feeling of something tangible that exists in the same space we do. And that these devices are bottomless portals to any number of other things unrelated to the task at hand.

Picking up the phone to check my todo list puts me in contact with 100 unrelated things, and at some point becomes counterproductive.

If something like the Apple Vision Pro was more accessible and wearing it was more like wearing eye glasses, I think its ability to render objects in space would make it more likely to be an effective interface for virtual task management. Emphasis on “more like wearing eye glasses” because it needs to be an always-on type of experience to come close to replicating a physical piece of paper.

Post reply on HN