Ask HN: How you focus on the project?

4 points·bourn··6 comments

I am following advice given in Deep Work by Cal Newport. What do you do to remain focused on the task?

I make sure goals are achievable in a small amount of time, if not I break them down further.

Eg, 'move from payments to subscription' is a big goal, a smaller one might be 'understand Stripe's subscription API' and 'modify UI for subscriptions'.

I also look at different facets of the problem. UX vs backend vs devops concerns so my works remains diverse and interesting (I'm assuming you're full stack here).

For any serious home software projects, I do a lightweight Agile process with Trello. All tasks need to be doable in a single work session of four hours or less - preferably less than one hour. So very fine-grained work.

And I stopped keeping a backlog. If it's important, I'll remember it. But I no longer have meltdowns and analysis paralysis trying to decide what to do next from that hundred-task monster list.

I like 4 hours too. This is realistically the largest amount of real programming most developers do a day, sans interruptions.

Yep. That's definitely about the maximum mental exertion I can do in a sitting. The important thing, though, is breaking my tasks down to things that I can do in a single sitting. If I have to spread the work out to multiple sessions, I have a hard time picking up where I left off.

A lot of my ideas about how to work were strongly influenced by Cal Newport and Matthew B Crawford.

Schedule every minute of the day. Disconnect from social media. Mute smartphone. Focus on the process, not on the result. Take small steps steadly.

Find an accountability partner.

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