
Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible - less_penguiny
https://guzey.com/productivity/
======
frlnc_throwaway
I highly recommend Jean Moroney's blog. She digs deep into the psychology
behind productivity and goal-setting. I found many unique insights in her
articles. Thanks to her writing I've come to believe that procrastination
often stems from deeper emotional issues or an unacknowledged clash of
priorities (for example, when you try to force yourself to do something that
you don't, in fact, want to do, the deeper issue is that you haven't resolved
the clash between your short-time desires and your long-term goals).

E.g:

[https://www.thinkingdirections.com/dont-motivate-yourself-
le...](https://www.thinkingdirections.com/dont-motivate-yourself-lead-
yourself/)

[https://www.thinkingdirections.com/three-steps-to-
following-...](https://www.thinkingdirections.com/three-steps-to-following-
through-on-your-priority/)

General list here:

[https://www.thinkingdirections.com/category/time-
management/](https://www.thinkingdirections.com/category/time-management/)

~~~
viach
> for example, when you try to force yourself to do something that you don't,
> in fact, want to do

This is called a day job, even for programmers.

> you haven't resolved the clash between your short-time desires and your
> long-term goals

Is it even possible to resolve? One would like to read books (play guitar,
gardening) for the rest of his life instead of trying to get his docker-
compose file working properly. How a productivity technique could resolve such
a discrepancy between goals and desires?

~~~
avip
If you actually spent your entire days gardening, you'd soon feel an
irresistible urge to bake a working docker-compose file. You'll procrastinate
and dream about YAML files instead of paying attention to your plants.

This is why some advanced communities have a weekly/monthly duty cycle where
people switch activities.

~~~
viach
> This is why some advanced communities have a weekly/monthly duty cycle where
> people switch activities.

Monthly/monthly sounds more fair to me. Or even monthly/weekly if I'm allowed
to dream...

~~~
avip
To clarify: Either _weekly work routine_ (Sun. gardening, Mon. kitchen, Tue.
teaching in school...), or _monthly work routine_ (same, but tasks are
retained for longer consecutive periods)

~~~
viach
Got it. I agree with your point that after months of gardening I will probably
be dreaming of the beauties of YAML files, or even XML if the gardening period
was too long. But still, does it solve the motivation/productivity problem?
Also, during long breaks you lose the context, so both types of activities
will be less productive.

~~~
avip
I don't think this way of organizing work is about maximizing individual
productivity. It's more about the (forgotten?) idea that there's more into
humans than being productive in some narrow scope.

------
thomas
Serious question: Is anything less productive than reading other people's
productivity thoughts? It's a combination of procrastination and finding out
what works for someone who is presumably more productive than you (ie: guilt).

~~~
pleasecalllater
One less productive thing I can think about is reading a comment about how
unproductive reading thoughts about productivity is :)

~~~
OedipusRex
It's turtles all the way down.

~~~
savolai
Or in this case, tomatoes.

(My first hn joke. Not sure if jokes are allowed but sure was worth it.)

~~~
mkhalil
I don't get your first HN joke.

~~~
dsclough
Pomodoro timers are shaped like tomatoes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique)

~~~
aoeusnth1
I also read it as "throwing tomatoes", as each commentator was criticizing the
previous level as being unproductive.

------
jedberg
> If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple
> of minutes away (better: an hour away)

One great hack for this is if you work from home, get up and get dressed, then
go out for a walk around the block as your "commute" to work. At the end of
your work day, take a walk again _in the opposite direction_ as your commute
home.

Even though the ploy is totally obvious, it will put your mind in a work vs
play mode depending on the direction of the walk.

~~~
birdman3131
An hour away seems like a waste of 2 hours of your day to a commute.

~~~
dTal
Depends how you view it. My commute is almost an hour, half on a train and
half by bike. In the morning, the train comes first, and I'm basically still
waking up. That's wasted time anyway - even if I were at leisure, all I'd be
doing at that point is sitting with a cup of tea, booting up my brain.
Occasionally I'll see a fellow commuter I know, and we can spend the time
chatting and waking up together. Then the bike ride - mostly along relaxing
bike paths and trails - is a great way to finish waking up and settle my mind
for work, as well as a core part of my daily exercise. Again, activity I'd
need to do at some point anyway.

In the evening, the bike ride is much faster as it's more downhill, and
because I'm fully awake the train ride is a chance to read, listen to music,
or program for fun.

Point is, with this style of commute, the time mostly isn't "wasted" because
it consists largely of activities I'd like to do at some point in the day
anyway. I don't know how people cope with an hour in traffic behind a steering
wheel.

------
toxik
I would definitely recommend against having an hour’s commute to work. It is a
really strong predictor for life dissatisfaction. Fifteen minutes is the
number I heard to be a good balance.

~~~
tomlong
I currently have an hours commute, which I find works quite well for me. It is
a little bit unusual though - it is a train journey with no changes, I always
get a seat, and I live about a 2 minute walk from the train station, and work
about a 2 minute walk from the train station at the other side. The train
journey is about 50 minutes.

It's a good period of time to slowly engage and disengage - I do the things
that might affect my productivity in the day - read HN, catch up on personal
(and sometimes work) email. I sometimes read a book, or message friends.

Everyone's different but this works nicely for me - when I get in from work I
tend not to feel the draw of the screen, so my leisure time is less at risk
from being sucked into for example reddit, and when I get to work, the period
of the day that in the past I have previously lost a lot of productivity to -
a 'few minutes' on catching up with the world, 'relevent' tech news etc I've
already scratched that itch.

I think it just sort of works with my fairly ill-disciplined personality
traits in a way that helps me be productive.

I think much longer though and I would feel I was losing too much of my day.
(I'm typically out of the house 07:00-18:00).

~~~
EmbarrassedFuel
Let me guess, Cambridge to KingsX to work at Google?

~~~
tomlong
Northallerton to Leeds, work at undisclosed.

------
CPLX
This is actually a pretty good list. Obviously it's personal and specific to
him but it gives food for thought.

With that said I've read a million posts like this and the only thing that's
ever made me feel like I had genuinely changed my perspective and understood
what was happening more clearly was reading the Getting Things Done book.

The key insight for me is that so much of procrastination results from a lack
of clarity about what exactly should be done next, and keeping a mental load
of trying to keep track of everything. Separating the three basic concepts of
planning, making decisions, and actually doing the work, into discrete
sessions, has been a life changer.

I still fuck off constantly and hate myself for procrastination from time to
time, obviously, but using the core GTD framework and returning to it when I
stray has _really_ helped.

~~~
reubenswartz
Yes. And if you’re not sure what to do next, the next thing to do is figure
out that next step. Sounds circular and silly, but helps tremendously to
realize, hey, I got stuck, let me take a step back and figure out what I’m
really trying to do and what tasks I need to complete to get it done.

------
ulisesrmzroche
You can only do about four hours of solid work a day.

That is the only trick I know that really works. Took me forever to relearn
to.

I went to school in Mexico where school is divided into two shifts, AM and PM;
choose the one you want.

1-5:30 are my work hours unless the water around the business gets a little
turbulent, in which case, I dunno, depends on if i consider you a friend or
not.

------
Scarblac
I need just one thing: a way to get rid of a bad habit that doesn't involve
changing the circumstances in which I have that habit.

I'm a Web developer with a mindless tic-like habit of opening sites like
Reddit and HN all the time. Even a second after closing it. I can't very well
get rid of Web browsers.

Edit: ohh, but the tip of going to a place where I've never procrastinated
before and sitting down to think what I actually want to do next, that doesn't
involve a Web browser. Nice.

~~~
misterman101
What's worked for me every time I get in that routine is to force myself to do
one to five push ups every time I think about switching tabs.

During that time I think about what it is that I really want to be doing.
After a while I automatically skip to this step without having the desire to
refresh HN.

~~~
Scarblac
The problem is that I don't _think_ about switching tabs anymore, it's really
completely brainless.

To the point that I sometimes do it in the middle of talking to people (while
sitting behind my desk), who will point it out to me, and then I will close
the tab. And then re-open it a few seconds later while still talking to them.
ctrl-T O enter, for old.reddit.com. It's really a true habit.

There is an extension where you can limit the number of tabs you have open,
I'm going to try that again. Limiting myself to 1 should lead to some
conscious thought, after those keystrokes fail a few times.

------
freediver
The simplest productivity hack is finding passion. I never seen a windsurfer
procrastinate. If you are truly enjoying your work and can't wait to do it,
there is nothing going to stop you.

~~~
wry_discontent
Unfortunately, that's not an easy thing to do. It's not practical for 90% of
people. Being software developers, we're lucky, but even though I love what I
do, I often hate doing it for other people.

~~~
0xJRS
90%? You think 1 in 10 people out there are passionate about their job and
love going to work on Monday?

~~~
neplus
Do you think more than 1 in 10 are excited to go to work on Monday or less?

------
debt
I think the biggest realization I've ever had is that things take time away.
The sensation of procrastination happens when you feel the "thing you need to
do" should take some smaller constrained amount of time, usually in days or
weeks or sometimes months.

But if you can stomach that the thing may take years or even a decade, you'd
feel much less like you were procrastinating.

In addition, if you assume that the thing will always be done piecemeal, here
and there, or when you can remember to do it say like cleaning a room or
organizing a thing, then that can also alleviate the sensation of
procrastination.

The sensation tends to occur when you maintain a false belief that the things
you need to get done should take hours or days instead of weeks or years.

------
gandalfgeek
Productivity is for peasants.

[https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/42828214104/productivity-i...](https://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/42828214104/productivity-
isnt)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
That's more interesting than the title implies.

------
dfboyd
I looked at the guy's pie charts of working time, and unless I'm reading them
wrong, he _never sleeps_. He has all 24 hours of the day marked as mostly
work.

~~~
lanekelly
He's mapping his working time onto the pie chart. For example, if he works
9am-5pm, during that time he follows the pie chart's structure for that block
of time.

------
antonkm
> "provides me with 625 minutes of work, interspersed with 275 minutes of
> breaks (provided my workday is 15 hours)."

Why would you work for 15 hours? I aim for 6. No way that you can be
productive for 15 hours.

And, do you really want to spend pretty much all your time working? I followed
along and agreed with lots of the stuff, then a comment like this throws me
off. I totally understand that you're having trouble focusing if that's a
normal day.

------
Rainymood
This [1] comic is hilarious and I have it on my background.

All self-help advice is bullshit and useless unless it changes your behavior.
Find what works for you, experiment, take what works, discard what doesn't,
rinse and repeat.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/5bIKcWR.png](https://i.imgur.com/5bIKcWR.png)

------
mrtnmcc
How to achieve a productive mentality seems closely tied with individual
dopamine and neuroscience factors (e.g. genetics like COMT / rs4680). Maybe
these guides should be customized to 23andme results.

------
ssorallen
RE: 11.3 Browser tab management

No manual, rule-based tab management ever worked for me, which is why I took
over development for Tab Wrangler a while back and have been continuing to
update it. Garbage collection for old tabs without me having to intervene.

This has been the best system for me, and it has worked well for years. Old
tabs are automatically cleaned up when I haven't looked at them in a while.

It's all open source:
[https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler](https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler)

~~~
mackrevinack
dayum. that's sounds like something I really need. every time i sort out my
tabs it takes only a week before it's back to normal.

when the tabs are closed and stored are they put into one folder or can they
be put into month folders?

~~~
ssorallen
The closed tabs are stored in the extension's local storage as JSON. There is
some basic sorting built into the extension, and you can use the export
functionality in the "Options" tab to export the JSON info and work with it in
other ways.

------
timerol
> If you aren’t working from home, your workplace should be at least a couple
> of minutes away (better: an hour away)

The notion of a commute being beneficial is weird to me. If it takes more than
5 minutes to get to work, I end up spending the time engaged in something
else, which leads to me being significantly distracted when I arrive. Thinking
for an hour about what to do when you arrive seems like the opposite of
productivity

~~~
wry_discontent
By happenstance I just ended up in an apartment that's a 5 minute walk from my
office. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I go home for lunch. I
spend 0 time commuting, I'm basically home as soon as I'm ready to leave.

Compared to my other jobs, which tended to have more like a ~30 minute
commute, I feel like I have so much more time in the day. I'm never taking a
job where I have to commute again. It sucks the life from me.

~~~
zettatron
A related anecdote: I lived in very small rural village in Nebraska for about
1.5 years . I worked at a small, sleepy, company that made radio broadcast
software. I lived across the street from my office parking lot. The
supermarket, gas station, library, and Post Office were all within 3-6 blocks.

Although some opportunities weren't available. The ability to spend
essentially 0% of my time commuting for any errands made my life very simple
and enjoyable.

I love in Boston now and work for a startup, so there's been quite a stark
contrast between my lifestyle in the past year. Luckily I work completely
remote now because I told myself then, I would never work or live anywhere
that requires me to spend a dozen hours a week driving and doing errand.

------
WaylonKenning
I enjoyed reading this. I've personally found it difficult to shoehorn work
into the 8-5. I've found that I work best speaking to people face to face and
formulating ideas from 9am to 12pm, and I work best putting together slides
and documents from 9pm to 12am. But between the two? I enjoy going out, seeing
the world, hanging with my wife, doing life activities.

Now that I know that, how can I fight it? Yes, I'm lucky to do a job that
allows me the flexibility to be task-centric rather than time-centric, but I'm
just happy that I've found a working model that, works, pun intended, for me.

------
m0zg
Most of the items on that guy's "todo" list wouldn't even qualify as "work"
for me. For me meaningful work can only be accomplished in uninterrupted
chunks of 2 hours or longer. There's so much mental context, and it's so
complicated, it takes a lot of time to rebuild it. I do gnarly low level C/C++
and assembly (for Intel, ARM and MIPS). "Write a blog post", "clean up one
note". If I used One Note or wrote blog posts, those would just be background
tasks while stuff compiles or tests/benchmarks run.

------
zettatron
My productivity hack is coming to terms with the fact that my life can't, and
will likely never, be as optimised as the processes and routines that I like
to optimize for work.

There is something about the oppressive guilt of being "unproductive" that,
for myself personally, far outweighs any of the benefits gained from being
hyper-productive.

Although I do feel a certain "high" when coming off of a full 8 hours of
get-$#&+-done mode. I try to realize that isn't a switch that is flipped. It's
just a derivative of my current state of mind.

------
NeoBasilisk
>Tabs have a tendency to blow up. However, there’s a natural upper limit for
how much the can blow up, since at some point they overflow and you no longer
have access to the rightmost tabs.

ahaha hahahahaha

------
lcall
Thanks for posting this. One thing that I think really helps me is to have a
reason for everything I do, better than pleasure/power/attention/toys, that is
relevant to both the long-term and the short-term. So I know why, and that
motivates me. One problem I might have had is too much motivation and I have
had to adjust, to re-balance.

I have decided that direction is more important than speed. I.e., making sure
the ladder of success is not leaning against the wrong wall (Covey), and that
we are not running in circles, or spending our lifetime on mere shiny things.
What do we want to look back on after decades, or at the end of mortality?
I.e., good decision-making, keeping in mind the purpose of one's life. My
purpose in life comes from my beliefs, but I think a next candidate for
purpose could be joy, which I suppose comes from knowing one's nature, and
from learning/growth, and unselfish service to others (helping them learn and
grow and be well & happy).

So, balance while moving forward well, based the above, to me is much more
important than getting _more_ tasks done (though I am very task-focused when I
am able, because the tasks relate directly to the purpose and related specific
goals). This and other things help me feel peaceful and happy (life and
learning are very much a work in progress, but some things I have gratefully
learned).

I have written more at [http://lukecall.net](http://lukecall.net) (a lightly-
loading, simple site), including about development of and candidate content
for maturity models for different areas of life (mental, physical, social,
spiritual). Feedback welcome.

------
sdinsn
> provides me with 625 minutes of work, interspersed with 275 minutes of
> breaks (provided my workday is 15 hours)

Who the hell works 15 hour workday?

------
lowdose
Everyone seriously thinking about productivity is going to mention Little's
law. If a resource is occupied for more than 80% the lead time is going to
increase exponential.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law)

------
vinceguidry
Personal productivity deals in the hoary space between defining who you are as
a person and figuring out the best way to move reality towards the vision.

If you're not treating subconscious input with as much seriousness as humanly
possible, (i.e. you're procrastinating for a good reason, one that probably
relates to why you think this thing you're procrastinating doing is the best
way to move the needle on that vision) then you will forever be living in a
hell of your own making.

Making yourself is an artistic pursuit and should be treated with every bit as
much care and nurturing as making a painting.

~~~
maxerickson
How else can you reach your final form!

------
joelrunyon
I've delved into this a couple times and put together a resource on some of my
thoughts here.

[https://impossiblehq.com/productivity/](https://impossiblehq.com/productivity/)

The "Workstation Popcorn" methodology has been particularly useful to work
from home, digital nomads, and remote workers who feel "stuck" in one spot
throughout the day.

[https://impossiblehq.com/workstation-
popcorn/](https://impossiblehq.com/workstation-popcorn/)

------
bobowzki
Whenever I read one of these posts I'm always very curious about the age of
the writer. I find my thoughts on this topic has changed a lot from mid
twenties to mid thirties.

~~~
guzey
Hi! I'm the author of this post. I'm 22. I wrote most of this post when I was
20. I still agree with basically all of it. Also, I spent like 6 months
writing it because most of the productivity advice is bs and wears off quickly
and I wanted to make sure I only include things that stick.

~~~
Scarblac
That explains a lot. I'm 45, and while all of this is very recognizable, it's
also very incompatible with my life.

But the reasons for procrastinating, those are spot on.

------
nurettin
My productivity tip is to get old. If you are too young for that, watch an old
person complete an overwhelming task. Model after their resilience and
patience.

~~~
nurettin
And I don't mean old as in obese diabetic vitamin d and iron deficient cranky
old. I mean reliable old.

------
Draiken
I often get surprised how deep we got hooked into the system. We tell
ourselves unless we're doing something (no matter how useless that is) we're
worthless. Everything becomes a different kind of procrastination.

We feel productive creating yet another CRUD app, idle game or advertisement
optimization tool that ultimately does nothing for anyone but the capitalists
on the top of the chain. Only to feel bad about doing anything that doesn't
generate profit to someone.

It saddens me that I don't see a way out of this hole. The system has won and
everyone either follows it willingly or is forced to by society.

If only I could be like the OP who seems to live happily in this productivity
cycle without gazing into the abyss that is the meaninglessness of it all.

~~~
scottishfiction
There are places where you can find well-paid work that isn’t for ‘capitalists
at the top of the chain’. Well, at least not directly. Do you think you’d find
the public sector equally meaningless?

~~~
Draiken
Unfortunately I live in a corrupt country where public work would possibly be
even more harmful than private work.

The incredible amount of wasted potential from human beings spent in the
endless race for profits makes me sick.

The irony of it all is that we're always trying to find ways to find meaning
in life and ended up caught up in the most useless quests possible...

------
naushniki
I wonder when achieving personal productivity has become a widespread problem
and why did this happen.

~~~
zettatron
The democratization of capitalism oversold the benefit of productive output

------
wizzzzzy
Does the 10hrs / day of actual working time described in the post seem exesive
to anyone else? Half this time would typically be a very productive day for me
and much more usually leads to a very unproductive following day.

------
boldfish
Presumably no-one productive ever shared their life with anyone else? The best
way to be productive? Work alone, as a hermit remotely, without the Internet.
(tricky if you build websites)

------
gcatalfamo
Adding to the other comments wondering about the age of OP, I also wonder if,
more than how to be productive, this doesn’t look more like “how to force you
to work”.

------
taurath
Number 1 and 2 are.... incredibly validating for me, in a way that I'm not
sure I could believe when talking about procrastination.

------
detcader
On the `Incoming.md` bit, y'all might be interested in the Markdown New Tab
Chrome extension which gives a similar affordance

------
jamesmcnalley
Nice list, Alex. Will take a look when I’m feeling less productive.

------
crb002
Needs to add in exercise.

~~~
guzey
I experimented a lot with exercise. I found that it doesn't influence my mood,
productivity, etc. at all, so I didn't include it. Admittedly, I'm an outlier
here.

~~~
crb002
Like Alan Turing I am extremely exercise dependent, and it has to be hard
exercise not just walks.

