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Comment by Insanity | Hacker News Reader

Write down what I'm going to do.

It happens that I can't really 'start' with work due to having too many things to choose from, or by not knowing how to really get started with it.

What always helps is writing down on a piece of paper a step by step guide of what I will do. this can be very general. But just having the steps written down helps me get started.

Kind of like a "todo list" except that I don't update it when I'm done.

This helps me when I need to make a choice for what to work on, but also to compartementalize the problems that I get stuck on.

For example, on my paper it says this at the moment:

     -> Extend importsystem
        -> Write parser for text-data
            -> check if data in system!

It's just a rough outline for what I should be working on at the moment (instead of being on HN, probably).

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Choice/decision fatigue is a tough thing. I also write down my todo's. I also take time to pick days to do things.

I almost never follow the schedule I set, but I manage to get everything done (deadlines are an advantage of being in school still, I think).

In a more freeform environment I impose a lot of structure on my schedule when I have a lot of executive function to spare (morning, coffee, 8+ hours of sleep, enough food). Then, the rest of the week (I plan in 1 week blocks) I stick to the schedule, and I don't really have to think about what I'm going to have to do.

There has to be some sense of flexibility, though. I forget to schedule things, and sometimes stuff pops up on short notice. Having items on my todo prioritized (1:=most important).

This is, of course, an idealized thing. I still strive to be consistent and effective in my routines.

And the corollary: write down what you have done. It can be (for me) hard to remember, giving rise to the mistaken feeling that you’ve achieved nothing.

I bullet journal. (https://bulletjournal.com/pages/learn) I got my wife into it as well. Our journals are vastly different. She uses it to review and keep info. I use it as a task list and some notes.

It's a big motivator and important tool I've picked up.

The best part of the bullet journal method is the de-prioritizing of tasks. I don't give up on things to the point of detriment. With a bullet journal, I've learned to let go of stuff and move forward.

I struggle with distraction and procrastination, making it feel like nothing gets accomplished on average, even though there are some small steps each day.

I have a kanban/whiteboard with small post-its and the "done" column is a reminder that things are being completed, even if not always at the pace I'd like. Not so much a hack as a reminder to not be down on yourself - we can't all be hyper-focused life hackers :-)

If you go a bit further with this, it becomes documentation-driven development :-) Also fits the first point of Simon Peyton Jones’s talk on writing a research paper: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/wr...

I would add to write done where you are when you are done for the day or switch to something else. I have an incredibly hard time picking up where I left off without something like this as apparently I'm able to compartmentalize more easily than some of my peers.

Some mornings it's just hard to get started.

A trick I use is to start something "easy" towards the end of the day, but not finish it. That makes it easier to get the ball rolling the next morning.

How do you manage not to keep thinking about how you gonna finish it? Sometimes even the easiest tasks can make me daydream about the final outcome.

That sounds like the difference between the J and P traits in the MBTI system. J-types (judgers) like me (and probably you) tend to plan ahead a lot and like to have matters settled, whereas P-types (perceptors) prefer to keep decisions open and decide how to do stuff when the time comes to act. I would guess that pmarreck is a P-type, or would at least lean towards P.

Wikipedia has more details on MBTI, and there are online self-tests for your own MBTI classification.

Disclaimer: Note the "Criticism" part of the Wikipedia page. MBTI is AFAIK not a tool that professional psychologists would use. Nonetheless, I find it useful in order to find similar people on the internet. For example, if I want to learn a new skill, a search query like "[thing] tutorial for INTJ" gives me way better results than just "[thing] tutorial" because I get recommendations from people who think in similar ways.

Heh, you're right: I believe last time I took the MBTI, I was either INTP or ENTP, definitely not J though! Interesting!

What majewsky said (which was interesting!)

Basically I am able to (mentally and physically) walk away from work and let go of it and go home and game or work out or whatever. Then, the next day when I sit down again, I get my bearings and see where I'm at and then proceed!

There are a few exceptions to this, of course, but it's always with hard problems I become absolutely OBSESSED about. For example I couldn't find an XML parser in Elixir a couple weeks ago that I liked, so I was faced with writing my own... which I did... and then released as open source https://github.com/pmarreck/mega_xml but I was literally up until 4:30AM one night figuring out how to turn an event-based XML parser callback mechanism into an Elixir Map datastructure (something I had never had to do before, but which I somehow knew I was barely capable of figuring out, lol). It was extra tricky (for me) due to the lack of mutability

To that end, Hemingway would stop writing for the day when it was going well, in the hope that resuming the next day would see a continuation of that ease.

This helps me a lot as well, as I have a large variety of tasks which often run in parallel, and having essential info written down reduces time for context switches and allows me to keep my working memory clear.

My technical solution for this is using a personal Trello board. Each task is a Trello card, and for a new task I write a rough outline of what needs to be done. I keep these cards in separate stacks: To-do (not started), In-progress, On-hold (waiting for external activity), Done (for archival purposes). For longer running tasks I do update the cards with additional information and progress status. And I can put high-priority tasks to the top of the stack. Creating, updating, and moving cards is all low-friction in Trello, so I find it to be well suited for me.

I found a simple 3 columns list to be useful to visualize tasks.

| To Do | Doing | Done |

Wouldn't this be hard to move items if it's written down? Unless you're using some sort of program like Trello?

True, you need to erase and re-write items to prioritize tasks—that may or may not be a downside. Haven't found an elegant app that does this smoothly. I use a simple Markdown file or paper, sometimes both. The truth is apps often become a distraction. Simple systems like this may work better on paper. The material presence of paper makes your list more tangible, plus you get the little satisfaction of striking through things as you progress through your list. Maybe re-ordering and writing the same items over and over is a good thing too as you'll notice important tasks if they are due for too long. It works well in combination with the Eisenhower matrix, as it also keeps things simple and visual.

A wall and some sticky notes might be a good method.

Any to-do list apps with labels should do the trick. I'm currently using Todoist but labels is a premium feature.

Thanks for sharing this. I saw this post earlier in the week and have been applying it this week. I have been much more productive and able to refocus much quicker.

I do this with TODOs as well. It's really helped.

I also do this. Two handy upshots are: - At the end of the week, I have a list of most of the things I’ve accomplished - Tomorrow morning, I can hit the ground running because I can remember where I left off

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