Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology | Hacker News Reader

Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology

matt.might.net

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"And, with the exception of nethack, there aren't many ways to waste a lot of time at the console."

Clearly, Matt has not yet fully learned the Unix lifestyle!

Indeed, irssi or other console IRC clients are very effective time wasters.

http://www.jaredandcoralee.com/CLIapps.html#Games

I wouldn't call nethack a waste of time.

On the other hand, links is a browser capable of wasting your time just as well as chrome.

These productivity hacks always really confuse me. Maybe it's just me.

Here's my logic: If you want to be productive (i.e. you have prioritized the current task/goal above all else), you just do it with full attention. If it's not very important or you can't align the task with a significant outcome, then you will be prone to distractions.

These tips boil down to negatively reinforcing distractions (not being productive) and positively reinforcing accomplishments (being productive). If you have the ability to apply all these reinforcement techniques in the first place, then you have the self-discipline to just do what you should.

Maybe I just personally prefer advice and tools that helps with prioritizing tasks since that tackles some of the underlying issues.

It's not just you. This kind of 'advice' has never helped me, I may even say that it harmed me in a way. There is only a single thing you need to be productive: You need to want it enough. Literally nothing else. There is no magical trick that makes you work more. You either do it or you don't. Many will say now "that isn't helpful at all! 'Just do it' isn't helpful advice!"

On the contrary, it is the only helpful advice that anyone could give you. I don't expect people to believe this, I certainly didn't. It takes guts to admit that maybe, just maybe...it's you who is at fault, not the distractions.

Ok, I admit I am at fault. All I need is to "just do it".

So, now I'm on-board with your solution... why aren't I "just doing it"?

I half agree with this. I've employed some of the above productivity tricks when I want to get things done really badly. I was productive.

I've also ignored all of these tricks had equal productivity.

When I don't want to do something, eliminating all familiar procrastination tools will just make me create or find new procrastination tools. I think the best advice is that small sentence in your post "you either do it or you don't". Embracing that mentality, I either do something or I put it behind me and do something else.

My tip: put yourself in some situation where work is so difficult or inconvenient it requires your full attention.

Example: your server crashes, two ads are linked incorrectly, your API provider has suddenly started returning 30% 503s. You are at a Bosselman Travel Center in Nebraska with a cell phone.

You won't get more done, but you will feel productive. It's possible to be inspired by the intensity of such endeavors.

Personally, the only thing that motivates me when the work is uninteresting is knowing that someone is expecting it. That's why I'm much less prone to procrastination on work I do for people than at college assignments. Blocking sites never helps, I can entertain myself staring at a blank wall.

I do minimize external distractions (IM, SMS, etc), but that's because they annoy me even when I'm interested in the work. I don't know how people can stand all those notifications popping up.

the only thing that motivates me when the work is uninteresting is knowing that someone is expecting it.

I find that to be a real problem in the workplace. An awful lot of employers/managers seem to think that they simply have to hire engineers, and everything will sort itself out. No clear focus or direction is provided, and no feedback is given on tasks completed. Soon, one feels that all work is going into a black hole, the engineer(s) become disinterested, and end up leaving.

I hope the irony is not lost on us that most of us are reading this at work...

Divorce yourself from all contact and live on a pillar somewhere in the Sinai desert. I think those folks were called anchorites http://wikipedia.orange.co.uk/wiki/Anchorite I'm surprised that a connection to the internet is allowed on a more than---oh say weekly basis. As you might guess, I don't particularly agree with the article. Only cure to the problem at hand is self discipline. Anything else will fail...

Completely off topic but "Wikipedia, brought to you by Orange"? What is that all about?

This. It is impolite to link users to spammy wiki-scrapers, unless your post is: "Hey, someone made another spammy wiki-scraper!"

I'm assuming hsmyers was directed/redirected to that site by their ISP.

But can one say that following the kinds of tips given in the article is already a kind of self discipline?

I know that I myself have a very hard time to work (like, I almost _can't_) if I'm not interested by (or having fun with) what I'm supposed to do. But sometimes there's no choice and then I'm really, really not productive. In this case, disconnecting myself from internet is kind of mandatory if I don't want to find myself "procrastinating" on IRC, HN or reddit (I often go there unconsciously, by reflex!).

My feeling is that the traditional definition of self discipline is kind of a fake thing. To me, self discipline is knowing yourself well enough to know where you will fail, and taking appropriate counter measures - not being strong-willed or something.

As a matter of fact Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz authors of "Power of Full Engagement" say that the idea of self-discipline (in the form of strong-will) does not lie at the base of productivity. Indeed they say that human being do not have near enough energy to be self-disciplined in that sense for many decisions.

I think that the real value of the article's tips is that as you get used to not going on HN/Reddit or just avoiding other types of procrastination you will get used to not doing that and thus won't do it even if you remove the barriers.

For what it's worth, anchorites would wall themselves into a small room -- the folks who lived atop a pillar were called stylites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylites

Remember the marshmallow experiment? They gave kids the option of a marshmallow now, or wait for some time and the researcher will give you two.

What was the most interesting was that the kids who didn't eat it didn't just sit there looking at it, dreaming of how good it would be to eat it but took steps to distract themselves from the temptation.

This is much more powerful than self discipline.

We need better productivity tools, not less technology. Much easier to just sign up for RescueTime. And try LazyMeter to focus on your to-do list one day at a time - we believe one of the core causes of procrastination is people not knowing what they're doing (it's easy to trick yourself into thinking you're productive when you're not).

I use this free app to block a blacklist of sites that suck my time. You can set it to block for any length of time you want:

http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/

Here's what I wrote on the topic three years ago:

"Some notes on how to make the internet more like a book, magazine, or phone than a television. That is, more like a tool than a world:

1. Do not use iGoogle, FriendFeed or any other service that provides you with "status updates" from a number of services at once. This leads to a condition where "checking your email" becomes "checking everything". Every hour you will find new interesting things that will bifurcate your attention into many worlds. (However, I have the feeling that an iPhone/iPod Touch, which is in a sense a portable iGoogle, would be a positive replacement. Better to check constantly on a non-immersive device...?) [My new opinion on this is that menu-bar style apps allow you to check email/Facebook etc. more frequently, but faster, which can break the habit of checking your email every 5 minutes and performing a full context switch.]

2. Do not invest yourself in social networks like Facebook. Don't join groups that encourage participation or frequently send out mass-messages. Don't friend anybody that you don't really want to read about. Use your profile as nothing more than a node (don't post anything to your profile that you might someday want to fiddle with). See it as a communication tool: glorified email/chat. Rather than making certain parts of your profile private, make everything public and make sure that anything anybody can see is something that anybody can see. (This means that you must occasionally un-tag photos and delete Wall posts.) Don't add any applications. Don't try to model your real-world social life.

3. Twitter is cool. It's addictive, but it doesn't take any time. <5 min. to check what your friends have written and update.

4. Blogs are cool. As long as you're producing content, there's nothing to feel guilty about. The point is not to stop doing drugs altogether, it's to make sure that every time you do drugs, you're using them to enhance your creativity and your relationships.

5. Use Times for aggregating feeds. Nothing compares. It frees you from the feeling that you have to read every article. Promotes quick scanning, just like a newspaper.

6. There's nothing to be done about email. It's addictive and time consuming and it's not going away. Make sure that you're not on any corporate mailing lists (Apple.com, stores you've bought stuff from). Filter mailing lists into folders. Practice self-discipline. Don't see yourself as somebody who 'replies within an hour'.

7. Create a habit of taking notes when you go on a tangent. This will force you to think deeply and remember what you've learned (plus you'll have it stored for future reference). It will also force you to slow down. I use an Instiki wiki running on my server so that I can access it from anywhere (though I'm considering switching back to desktop tools like VoodooPad and DevonThink).

8. Favor anti-design. Anytime you have any control over CSS, choose a white background with black text and blue links. Or find some other theme and stick to it. Remember, the internet is blue.

9. When you can, use UNIX (command line). It feels more like a tool for doing tasks than a world.

10. Make sure that Facebook sends only two types of notification to you: notification for Messages and Wall posts. This way checking your email means checking your email and also checking the only time-sensitive feature of Facebook at the same time, thus allowing you to ignore Facebook."

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