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Comment by mjlee | Hacker News Reader

Personally, the biggest win was to learn how to leave tasks unfinished.

This pays off in two ways - firstly I finish work when I planned to instead of "just five more minutes", which inevitably spins off into a series of open ended diversions. Secondly, it means I can start the next day with something I can sink in to, avoiding the feeling of procrastination and guilt that comes along with that, ultimately resulting in working later to pay back that lost time.

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I was going to suggest a variation of this idea that I learned about here on Hacker News and have applied successfully since:

Try to stop on a bug or error.

Same reasoning you cited with a bonus: when you come back in the morning, you'll have an error message to help you quickly pick up where you left off.

Reminds me of the "meanwhile back at the ranch" school of screenwriting: switch to your B story when your A story is at its peak of interest, and switch to your A story when your B story is at its peak. That way when you do switch back you won't have to work (too hard) to keep the audience's interest.

Love this whole thread. I thought I'd add a bit more for those who ended up in the same position I ended up in a little while back: if you're ever stuck in a position where you're forced to use an environment where you iterate so slowly that it takes days to a week to get from one error to the next error: take notes along the way as you go. Take notes about things which could be done differently if they weren't stuck a certain way. Not only does it neatly manage deadline anxieties, but it helps you build a map of friction points that are keeping things slower than you'd like, and it gives you the detail you need to slowly build cohesive and persuasive plans for improving the situation.

Of course, the optimal plan at that point could easily be for you (as it was for me) to leave the situation, but even so -- at least it makes that clearer!

In combination, this sounds great. You get a fresh start the next day and have context through the notes you wrote.

I found that stopping 20 minutes before I intend to leave and making a list of things to do (and their current state) allowed me to start the next day a lot more easily. And it also produces a log of things done which is additionally useful.

I try to finish something every day. Sometimes I will work a little later but sometimes I also stop at 3pm. Took me a while to not feel guilty about finishing earlier but otherwise it's very one sided where you are expected to work more when needed but never work less even if things are quiet.

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