Hacker News Reader

Comment by kd5bjo | Hacker News Reader

I’ve read a lot of time management/productivity books, and there seem to be only two things all of the authors agree on: write stuff down, and continuously tweak your system.

The latter is usually mentioned offhand in the preface, as the author wants to deliver a fait accompli instead of just some tips and tricks.

View on HN

To what extent do you suppose "continuously tweak your system" really means "show up"?

That is, could you substitute any other activity that requires you to actually pay attention and be present and get equal progress?

I think there may be a category theory of self improvement. The more I look at the things I've done to improve my situation from health to work to finances, the more they start to look similar (in a nutshell, it's not math, it's not psychology, but it might be both).

That’s a large part, but there’s also an aspect of kaizen to it. Everyone’s thoughts work a little bit differently, so the mechanisms that work best for me maybe don’t work quite as well for you. Regularly asking yourself “how can this be better” is the only way to maximize your own efficiency because nobody else is competent to answer the question.

The one true path is that there are no one true paths and that the most successful people seem to have the best managed iterative learning cycles (and write stuff down).

Can you elaborate on "write stuff down"?

Plan, write a log of work, write down your todos, keep track of what your doing and keep yourself accountable.

I keep an Excel control table. Every task assigned goes on that table with a project, type (report, code, algorithm design or integration work) and module (which part of the project needs an update). There is also a remark column which I one day intend to process with nlp. I also like to generate a pivot table at the end of each week to know which type or modules of work I'm neglecting. I've also got some conditional formatting to mark rows as red when I blow the deadline (red) or when I need to finish something by today (yellow). Has worked well for me when I was an engineer and I'm evaluating this work flow for an integrator (it's an official post for someone who makes sure that several teams deliver compatible outputs on time).

Broadly, use external storage (paper or a computer) to keep track of things that you don’t need to know right now so that that mental capacity is available for whatever you’re actually working on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com