
Effective Productivity Hacks from 80 Startup Founders - jarek-foksa
http://foundersgrid.com/productivity-hacks
======
moron4hire
When I was a kid and procrastinating my homework, my father would sit me down
at the dining room table, stand over me, and command "put the pencil on the
paper. Move your hand. Move. Your. Hand."

Productivity hacks are nice tricks to get you over a little resistance
sometimes. But for really bad blockings, nothing beats just sucking it up and
doing the work. I can't always get the perfect cup of coffee. Sometimes I'm
forced to work with unfamiliar tools. Occasionally, I might not even have my
desk available, say nothing about it being clean and uncluttered.

That said, one of my favorite productivity "hacks" is to take a long train
ride. Amtrak has free wifi and coffee in business class, the seats are large
and comfortable, and lunch is pizza and beer. Airplanes don't do it for me, I
think because I've never been on one with free wifi, they are uncomfortable,
and most of the places I'd be traveling to are only two or three hours away. I
take the train any time I'm traveling on the east coast.

Semi-related to that, I also accompany my wife on her business trips. Since
she will already have a hotel room paid for, I use the wifi while she's
working in a helicopter somewhere. I get a ton done during the day and then
feel absolutely no guilt about kicking off at 5pm and doing nothing for the
rest of the night but sit and drink with my wife.

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bill_bkr
I really like it that most of the hacks aren't polished too much; makes it way
easier to read for me. Often all those startup tips'n'tricks can be cheesy and
distract.

Many notes were useful to me, but this one struck me as I was dealing with it
yesterday:

> "Writing everything down. After years and years of assuming that I can rely
> on my memory, I finally realized I was wrong about that. Even if I can
> remember something, the task of my brain holding onto that little piece of
> information is taking time and energy away from whatever task it is that I’m
> working on in the moment. I’ve cobbled together a handful of
> products/services to achieve what has become a pretty efficient way to keep
> track of everything." > _By Kendall Guillemette_

I was thinking about creating a website with
categories/hashtags/search/calendar (could use something like WP/Drupal) and
using it for the same purpose.

Did someone else have the same problem? How did you solve it?

~~~
steveeq1
Don't know if you use emacs, but I use org-mode on text files with Dropbox.
Supports tags, calendaring, searching, etc.

~~~
bill_bkr
Thanks for the suggestion, will check it out.

------
stellar2014
"My favorite 'magic pill' productivity hack is my Seiki 39″ monitor" \-
bountify founder

wouldn't 39" monitor be too big for programming? what is HNers' preferred
size?

~~~
tetha
Tiling window managers take care of that. At work, I'm hurting for more space
a lot with 2x24" monitors, especially when I need to keep close tabs on a
critical service.

~~~
steveeq1
What window manager do you use?

~~~
tetha
xmonad.

