PS. Never commented on HN before, so ignore my comment if it breaks rules/guidelines of the site.
As a teenager, I heard someone say "never let a piece of paper cross your desk twice" and took it to heart. Took a while to make it a habit, but now I can apply it to most meetings and emails -- I read, action then archive right there. So I hardly maintain a todo list of any sort. I make a list in the morning and finish/scratch off its items by the evening. Doing that daily, my mind is always refreshed about recurring or long term tasks. It seems to work for me.
The other thing I found useful is that procrastination, or the getting-started-barrier is proportional to size/complexity of task. I keep breaking the task down to smaller units until I get to something that doesn't fill me with loathing when I think of it. And then I do it. That effectively starts the task.
The problem with responding to an e-mail immediately, is that often you will get an e-mail back immediately, making this habit ineffective.
(I just wish there was an option in my e-mail reader to send an email with a delay.)
Instead, I just answer my e-mails in the morning and ignore any new incoming e-mails the rest of the day.
It might seem silly, but just thinking in terms of the rational decision maker and the instant gratification monkey makes it more concrete in my mind and easier to resist.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...
- We always find time to do things we love doing. So the trick is to simply fill your bucket with things you genuinely enjoy.
- Always have a backlog. It might be a note or a sheet on Excel - but always have a list of things that need to get done. Keep adding the new stuff into this as they come, and spend a couple of hours once a week running through this.
- Get in the flow. Plan your backlog so you have a mix of high, medium and low complexity stuff on your plate.
- Figure out your "in-the-zone" time. For me, I've noticed that I'm most charged up for creative work later in the evening. Make sure you don't have any meetings or distractions lined up during and at least an hour before your zone time.
- Get your temple. Everybody needs a place where they can go, zone in and get work done.
- Have a daily standup where you discuss what you planned to do yesterday, what you did, and what you plan to do today. Do this EVERY SINGLE DAY.
I've noticed most organized/ disciplined folks just do this automatically. For us procrastinators, it's like starting a workout routine after your BMI has hit the ceiling - you need a system, and you need a system that you'd actually enjoy if you want to stick to it!
- Accepting procrastination as part of you & forgiving yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267564
- Tackling only one important task per day: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/11/03/productivity-hacks/
- Tiny Habits: http://tinyhabits.com/
The purpose is to filter out any activity that challenge breath, eat, drink and sleep. If one comes in any way, I just quickly put in the the trash.
That way when I reach a goal (if I had one at the time), I breathe better and so on... So step by step I create my world only on those 4 pillars.
There are so many things that trying to tweak those pillars, maybe the first one in your case is that battle against procrastination.
Avoid them and you will have so long to do who makes you breathe better...
As a human being, share is not a priority but it's vital to mankind. I didn't say to be a hermit, we need to cross genes sometimes!
Once that becomes habitual, you may find the other Maxims on productivity to be relevant: http://www.maxims.us/topics/productivity/
What? Ok... I bring one from another context who IMO fits well here:
"The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda.
You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for.
Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about." Noam Chomsky
But perhaps your argument hinges on the assumption that 'hire a psychotherapist' is advice that diverts the attention from a more important issue. If that's the case, I'd like to hear what you think this might be.
The Chomsky quote wasn't just about that psychotherapist maxim, it's that one that made me tilted.
These maxims sound to me like if the job is not done it's the worker who got a problem and need to change. I'm just trying to say that maybe it could be the nature of the work and how we see it.
For example I am one of those who have really a lot of never-ending-awesome-side-projects. I'm fine with it.
As soon as I realize that particular job is more fun 'not to be completed' but because it allows me to learn more, share with others, discover techniques and occasionally strange weird reasons (wage?)! The completion is just a social reward (and yeah maybe I often fear the 'what to do next' desert).
The path to completion is so much more valuable to me.
We need more maxims to realize all the small ignored ends on the ongoing projects. Sometimes an idea is cool because of one of those ends, which is already done, and it would be a shame (and a time loss) to force yourself to continue.
P.S: I don't preach a do-never-finish lifestyle, it needs personal balance.
I can't understand why GTD is not anymore trendy (at least in HN) once it is the most efficient system I ever used. Since I implemented it, my life changed. If you ever get curious about GTD, besides reading the original book (Get Things Done by David Allen) you can have a look at my implementation (on my github), it might be a good starting point.
It hasn't been "life changing" so far, but I almost know that it will change my life once I start practicing it rigorously.
Also, will definitely check out your setup.
If it works for you, of course that's great! And I think there are tons of individual elements in GTD that are valuable even if the whole system is not applied. But for me it didn't work as a whole, and it's significantly less useful if not applied completely (but also significantly more powerful when it is).
What seems to work best for me is a combination of two approaches:
1. choosing up to three tasks to focus on per day, usually one major task, and two lesser tasks. 2. using a simpler list of (usually) smaller or less important tasks for all the stuff that I can't dedicate a day or half-day to. I used Mark Forster's AutoFocus system for this for a while, and now I settled on the 'Final Version' that this evolved into: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-...
I think a crucial part for me is that I need a certain fluidity in my approach. The more complex, 'factory-checklist-like' the system is, the better. The lack of complexity keeps me from constantly fiddling with the system, and the lack of a 'factory-like' approach keeps me from feeling like I'm a robot working through a checklist.
So, my never-ending work in progress solution: focus on discipline. No magic bullets, no special talent, no nothing. Just focus on being disciplined and have faith on us being creatures of habit (i.e. if you force yourself to do it, it will be easier in the future). A special talent to get things done is cool, as well as being motivated, but - really - you can't rely on those to get things done. Talent comes and goes, much like motivation. Discipline, on the other hand, you can rely on.
Source: former procrastinator
What worked for me is this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordina....
I started getting things done when I ask this question to myself: 'What is the one thing I can do now so that everything becomes easier?' and then do that task.