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Comment by zaphar | Hacker News Reader

I've found that there are no tricks. It's mostly just sit down and start working. It'll take about 5-10 minutes of steady concentration and suddenly I'll drop into the zone. There is no substitute for "just do it" as far as my personal makeup goes. I used to try all the various hack your mind stuff that comes out every few years. But when it came down to it there was no substitute for just sheer concentration on the task at hand.

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The Chain Reaction Method. A little bit of work is enough to trigger a snowball effect. The only "trick" I use is to start by working on something that's extremely easy/fun first. Once I'm knee deep it's not difficult to take on more challenging things.

I still have no solution for the larger multi-week productivity swings that seem to occur...

Emphasis on "easy": even if it's just typo-fixing in your code or doing problems from week 1 of class, mundane/brainless tasks fine kindling for getting your brain chugging along for the bigger problems.

This triggers it for me easily, I go a few dozen lines above and read through. I find it helps snap me back into the 'work' mode, which allows me to continue on. On some projects this has got to the point that it becomes like how putting on sweat pants makes you behave differently than wearing a suit.

Another suggestion in this vein. If you are in productive mode, leave the easy stuff alone.

Do the easy stuff when you need to get started.

I agree with this. Just doing it is the only trick. It helps to get off the social networks and websites (HN too), put your head down and just work.

After a short time, provided your work is somewhat engaging, you'll be in the zone in no time.

agreed. I've found the only trick is there are no tricks. It takes me more than 5-10 minutes to get into it, but within an hour or less usually, I find myself in the zone and can go for 12 hours.

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