Suggestions? Thanks.
After a short time, provided your work is somewhat engaging, you'll be in the zone in no time.
I still have no solution for the larger multi-week productivity swings that seem to occur...
Do the easy stuff when you need to get started.
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/12/willpower.php
I don't want to say "you can't do it" but I remember from my school days hitting the wall and there was nothing I could do about it until I'd had time to rest and recharge.
Here are some interesting links about gumption I've collected over the past few months (mostly from HN):
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/burnout/ http://sivers.org/dont-fight-it http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006569.html
In short, 10 hours of mental work might be your limit. I know that if I can squeeze in 10 solid hours of good creative mental work, I've had an extremely good day. Most good days I'll eek out 6 hours. Average days are probably around 4.
You might look at options to reduce that 10 hours somehow. Some people drop out of school, some just skip a class a day, some drop a class from the schedule altogether, etc.
You also don't talk about what your 11th hour is. Finding something interesting to you, especially if you're out of gumption, will be critical.
When you're full of mental energy, you can do anything; when you're out mental energy, your choices of what you can do are limited to easy things that are interesting.
Good luck!
Me I like juggling as a warm up.
>I can work for 10 straight hours if I'm at school
This is part of the problem IMO. Schools are inherently coercive and this messes up one's approach to instrinsically motivated learning.
It is the task itself that provides the reward. If the work is noble and interesting and if it lies within your abilities then you will find sufficient vitality is available to perform it.
OTOH, forcing yourself to do stuff (as if you were still at school) causes the mind to slowly shut down (starting with loss of creativity).
>I find it very hard to work at least 1h
If you weren't doing the 'work', what would you be doing instead during that hour? Start with that, and do it better.
And don't read Hacker News :)
I'm there to work, not enjoy my music, so I am perfectly OK with this change.
Almost nobody can work for 10h straight. I'd guess that you're taking breaks for lunch and between classes, and to hang out with friends. It could just be that you've run out of juice by the time you get home.
I've found that I get about 3-4h of good, productive, cognitively demanding work done a day. My friends in grad school say this is fairly typical of them too. If there's an exciting project with a deadline, I might be able to go up to 7-8 hours in bursts, but that's paid for by a week or so of complete unproductivity afterwards.
The good news is that this is enough. Those people you hear about who've built world-changing inventions? They didn't do it through working more, they did it through working more effectively. That means paying attention to what's important, doing it, and letting the busywork slide.
Put together a customized workspace for yourself. It doesn’t have to be big, just outside the regular house living space somewhere. Somewhere like the garage or basement (even a big closet). Somewhere you can be alone and not bothered by anyone but is not a bedroom.
Set yourself up with a desk/table and proper office chair like you can get from Office Depot. Hook up the internet for yourself and a put in a good light source, also buy a small 1-man coffee maker from Walmart or somewhere cheap and buy some strong coffee. Keep the coffee maker and coffee in your workspace and drink coffee when you are there while focusing on getting down to work. Don’t play games there or do anything but work in there and drink coffee.
Since you are in high school here are a couple of links about Pavlov’s dog in case you don’t know about him. (ps. teachers always seem to like reports about things like Pavlov’s dog for extra credit.)
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/read...
If I really have trouble getting motivated about a project I will try to find a better or easier solution. I can't really grind away at something I'm not interested in. I need to figure out a way to get into the project. One of the things that helps me is making diagrams. I will spend a lot of time making sure all the fonts are right, good colors, good spacing, etc. It's silly but, in the end, I have this really nice diagram and I'm somehow more motivated to make it a reality. The other trick is to find people who are interested in what you're doing. Their excitement and interest can be infectious. It really helps to feel like what you're working on isn't a waste of time.
Alternatively, here's my trick: I have a "work" Pandora station. I turn it on when it's time to work, and I never turn it on unless I'm working. While it's on, it's time to work.
When it pauses after an hour, I can choose either to take a short break -- with the music off -- or I can immediately re-start it and continue to work for the next hour.
It's been a handy bit of mental conditioning.
I use awesomewm, which, like ratpoison and ion, works hard to maximize every window and minimize distractions.
It's also good to designate one part of your room as the spot where you get your work done, and sit there if and only if you're going to do work, so that you pair sitting at your desk with getting work done. If you can't get into hack mode after about fifteen minutes of sitting in front of your work, get up and do something like solve a Rubik's cube, play Tetris until you lose, or just go get something to drink, but then sit down and try again.
Then, I do them in order. Doing them in order is important- otherwise, I'll waste time procrastinate by trying to figure out what I should do next. If I do them in order, disregarding importance or difficulty, I don't spend half my time debating over whats next.
Another solution is to sell your mobile, tv, laptop, xbox... you'll find your productive mode.
And by "forward" I mean "more usable" or "more releasable" rather than "cooler". That's important :-)
My experience tells me that it works great, each completed task motivates me to next one and so on.
I hadn't realized how accurately that describes my productive/unproductive periods.
As far as music goes, have an album that you can put on infinite loop.
2.) appropriate music - I cannot work without headphones, and appropriate music on, its more of a tool to drown out the rest of the world.
3.) caffine, cold - at work i drink coffee... its just not as effective. I used to drink a lot of red bull, but my heart started to feel funny so I switched to coke.
4.) Interest - I need to get myself interested in what i'm working on, this is incredibly difficult to do with job work. I'm still working on solving this one.
I'd put 1 more strongly - eradicate distractions. When I can't work I try to avoid doing distracting things. Even if it seems like you're doing nothing, keep on doing nothing. Take a nap. If you avoid distractions you eventually start working. If you succumb, you just start the spiral all over again.
I think it's a function of sugar. Really sweet coffee tastes terrible. Properly sweetened coffee does not give your brain that glucose rush that super-sweet soda does. (Soda can be super-sweet without tasting bad, apparently.)
(I drink a lot of coffee and tea, and it's nice, but sugary energy drinks are something my brain really enjoys the effect of. Not so good for the rest of your body, however.)
It's the carbonation. Flat soda is undrinkably super-sweet.
It makes some of the mundane line items or defect work seem like the next Google sometimes.
That, and going into the work thinking "this is the last code I will ever write" does the trick. Make your source code a work of art.
I think if you go through my HN history, you can see what days I was trying to cut down on sugar :)