A Simple and Dynamic Method for Consistent Productivity
matthewsaltz.wordpress.com
matthewsaltz.wordpress.com
Completing larger tasks gives a much deeper satisfaction yet despite a long time trying to teach my body/brain this, it still craves the easy path instant gratification.
So one thing I do is split up the big task into lots of small tasks so I can cross more off and get the gratification hits. This helps my brain prioritise those over other small tasks.
There is a great metaphor [1] about big rocks that captures this idea well: Put the big rocks first to fill a jar quickly, then fill it up with marbles, sand and water. Not the other way around!
Think about the big rocks as your 1-2 hour long tasks. The important pieces of work you want to get done each day. If you don’t plan them, it’s easy to get distracted by small things that fill the day but stop you from progressing with your projects.
So, make sure to put the big rocks first to get stuff done.
Understanding and internalizing compounding effects is liberating. The big and distant goals become much closer when your progress toward them accelerates exponentially. The compounding effect means iterating consistently, no matter how small the proportional increment.
You could try this low-tech solution out without buying the journal. Simply trial it from any notebook / sketchbook.
#In a private repository, obviously.
I tend to be overly excited and thus think that I can finish something that takes a week in a day. Then when I give myself more time for something I finish it more quickly...
The key is to excercise the estimation muscle.
Keep logs about your estimations and how long it actually took.
Then think through periodically what caused the big differences.
This way in the long run you’ll be able to precisely estimate tasks you’ve sort of already done in the past, and can estimate a reasonable low/high time range to finish tasks which you’ve never done before.
> Typically the goals I choose are things that might take one to two hours of focused effort.
Very few of us can accurately estimate what will take a day, but an hour is much more manageable.
In addition, on the few occasions where I didn't manage to hit my goal by the end of the day (maybe three times in the last month), I'd take the time to figure out why that was and think of how I could have reframed the goal in a way that would have made it achievable. Usually when I missed a goal it was because it was either not specific enough or it was dependent on something else. For example, I might have had "Push XYZ patch", when it should have been "Make bugfixes to XYZ patch and push if able", since there's always the possibility that the latest fixes introduce an unexpected problem or that the reviewer won't get to the code review that day.
While I'm working if something comes to my mind, I used the hotkey for my todo list app and add it to my bullshit box list. This will take some discipline but it's very effective. Sometimes later on I realize the task that I added is not really necessary and was a complete distraction so I delete it.
Sometimes I do use trello because it's clean. Smart watch is great to get the ideas out of your mind when you get them in the wrong place & time. With these methods I use simple and clean time tracking tool to actually get something done that can send invoice to customers: http://worktime.tuunix.fi/ and to concentrate on 1 thing at the time.
Time tracking accomplishes something very similar. Its main benefit isn't necessarily the log that you're creating to review later but the fact that when you have a running timer labelled "doing x", it's much easier to focus just on x and nothing else.