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Comment by yef | Hacker News Reader

Here's a related trick, more useful when you're starting your day than when you're already in the flow of things:

Pick your task, preferably something small and easily defined like "refactor this duplicated code", estimate how long it will take you, set a countdown timer for that amount of time, and then try to beat your estimate.

This can begin your day on a productive note, rather than sitting and spending 45 minutes reading email and whatnot.

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This is a good tip. In the past, I've often found myself paralysed by indecision first thing in the morning.

I started leaving myself specific, simple tasks the night before, so that I could get something done first thing in the morning. After doing that first thing, everything else seems to fall into place.

For those on OS X, there is a very nice application to do just that, it's called Vitamin R[1]. It works by "Time slice"... Add a new time slice (let's say 30 minutes) write your goal, and click "Start".

At the end of the time slice you can either start a new task, take a timed break, or an open-ended break. I find it works very well and keeps me motivated...

[1] http://www.publicspace.net/Vitamin-R/

I wrote a pretty simple iPhone app that could be used for this called ToDo Timer (http://bit.ly/hBn9jk). Here are some promo codes: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1867872/ToDo_Timer_Promo_Codes

Googled todo timer, 2nd in search result is your itunes app link, congrats!

Also interesting is 8th result is techrepublic's listing. Did you submit to them or did they mined it?

Thanks. Techrepublic must have mined it as I don't recall ever submitting anything and they have all my apps listed with descriptions word for word.

While giving free stuff is nice, filling your post with random numbers makes it pretty ugly. I wish there was a different way you could do this...

Yeah me too, any ideas? Maybe I could have thrown up a web page with the code and linked to it.

Edit: Ok, I threw them in my public dropbox folder and updated the post with a link.

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