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I hacked my clock to control my focus

paepper.com

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Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#61

Post by horsellama »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #59
horsellama wrote: post #56

talking about focus hacks…when at uni I had odd studying hours, often mixing day and night without any clear distinction. What kept me grounded were scented candles. IKEA used to sell those with an expected burning time. My favs were the 40hrs ones [0]. My exam preparation was 1 candle for revising notes, 1 candle to go through relevant books and 1-2 candles to do exercises (exp for calculus and similar courses). Add…

Can you elaborate more on this? I couldn’t quite understand whether you used these candles to “anchor” yourself to different times of day, or if you were just using them as kind of cumulative timers?

I used them to keep track of time in a broad sense. Once the candle was on, my mind wouldn’t care about the time and could focus on the course work. I was offloading the time tracking to the candle (if that makes any sense).

It was also handy to know when preparation was done. Once depleted the candles any doubt about my preparation would be relegated into “impostor syndrome” symptom.

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#62

Post by horsellama »

FireBeyond wrote: post #60
horsellama wrote: post #56

talking about focus hacks…when at uni I had odd studying hours, often mixing day and night without any clear distinction. What kept me grounded were scented candles. IKEA used to sell those with an expected burning time. My favs were the 40hrs ones [0]. My exam preparation was 1 candle for revising notes, 1 candle to go through relevant books and 1-2 candles to do exercises (exp for calculus and similar courses). Add…

Doesn't that add up to like 200 hours per course for study? Two or three courses and you're at 600 hours study per 13-week term? 46 hours a week on top of your actual class load?

sounds about right, I was pulling all nighters and had no weekends, holidays, etc

However, some courses were “easier” and didn’t require such effort.

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#63

Post by n3t »

physicles wrote: post #51

Super cool hack. For something slightly less hacky, check out the Argos gnome shell extension. It creates a folder where any script dropped there will get executed every N seconds, and the output placed on the title bar. It’s been life-changing.

What scripts do you keep there? What are your use cases?

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#64

Post by Brajeshwar »

RandomWorker wrote: post #18
Brajeshwar wrote: post #15

A timer is one of the most underrated ways to stay focused.[1] We have all been there where you are supposed to work on that boring but critical bug for the project, where a few other team members are waiting, but you end up booking a domain, building a landing page, and launching a waiting list. By dinner, as you are talking to potential alpha users in your community and start spreading the word, you realize you hav…

I love the idea of hourglass! Thanks for sharing I’ve ordered mine on Amazon today. It’s about a foot tall. This is also a great way to signal to other people in the office that I’m busy.

Yes, mine too is about a foot long. https://www.instagram.com/p/CkXmQWUpfKq/

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#65

Post by sandspar »

I suppose you could do this in Tasker on Android with a Scene at Y=0.

I'm curious whether it works though. When I try these kinds of things, my eyes ignore it after a day or two. All productivity hacks have lifespans but I find that reminder/annoyance-based ones fade very quickly.

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#66

Post by physicles »

n3t wrote: post #63
physicles wrote: post #51

Super cool hack. For something slightly less hacky, check out the Argos gnome shell extension. It creates a folder where any script dropped there will get executed every N seconds, and the output placed on the title bar. It’s been life-changing.

What scripts do you keep there? What are your use cases?

A few:

- Current time in a few different time zones (work is scattered around the world, and log files are always in UTC, so it's handy to have those there at a glance)

- Wifi network name. Our office has multiple wifi access points with the same SSID, so the script uses the AP's MAC address to figure out which one I'm actually connected to

- Current latency to google.com via VPN (I live in China so if internet isn't working, the VPN is always the first thing to troubleshoot)

Ones that I've thought about adding but haven't gotten around to it:

- Status of our cloud monitoring (i.e. a green square if things are OK, red square if not)

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#67

Post by xrhobo »

RandomWorker wrote: post #18
Brajeshwar wrote: post #15

A timer is one of the most underrated ways to stay focused.[1] We have all been there where you are supposed to work on that boring but critical bug for the project, where a few other team members are waiting, but you end up booking a domain, building a landing page, and launching a waiting list. By dinner, as you are talking to potential alpha users in your community and start spreading the word, you realize you hav…

I love the idea of hourglass! Thanks for sharing I’ve ordered mine on Amazon today. It’s about a foot tall. This is also a great way to signal to other people in the office that I’m busy.

I never thought of an actual hourglass but I do love the idea too.

Something almost ritualistic about it. I have to get one myself.

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#68

Post by GuB-42 »

Clever.

It doesn't have to be about focus, any "constant reminder" could go there. For example "give back that pen", "unload the washing machine", "call mom" or whatever needs be done as soon as possible without requiring your immediate attention.

Re: I hacked my clock to control my focus

#70

Post by tailspin2019 »

horsellama wrote: post #61
tailspin2019 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more on this? I couldn’t quite understand whether you used these candles to “anchor” yourself to different times of day, or if you were just using them as kind of cumulative timers?

I used them to keep track of time in a broad sense. Once the candle was on, my mind wouldn’t care about the time and could focus on the course work. I was offloading the time tracking to the candle (if that makes any sense). It was also handy to know when preparation was done. Once depleted the candles any doubt about my preparation would be relegated into “impostor syndrome” symptom.

Very interesting, thanks for elaborating!
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