Ask HN: How do you deep work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deep work?

8 pointspsikomanjak14 comments

How do you enter you deep work/most productive state.

I procrastinate on the work for 5 hours, then panic and get hyperfocused. It's not a good way to do things, but it's how I do it.

This is how I write new code. I swear my brain needs that procrastination to construct a model of the new code. When I maintain old code, test, debug, deal with prod issues, write doc/ticket etc... I find myself procrastinating a lot less and less. It's curious since writing new code is my favorite thing to do among other things.

The "procrastination for too long" into hyper work, erm, "workflow", is too real.

Sometimes if I can get started on _something_, I can kick start the working. But if I don't, this is the fallback

Not gonna be a popular response but few months ago I was really angry at myself because of two diverging realities

1. I think I am a fairly good developer, when I am in a flow state, I can accomplish a huge amount of work in 3-4 hours.

2. I am very rarely in a flow state.

I am always doing something else, watching some videos, reading books or Feedly, hoping around, etc.

Now comes the controversial part, recently I started using Ritalin. About 5 doses each week. There will probably be consequences (I am not sure), but it's magic. I reach a flow state in under 20 minutes and stay this way for 4h or so.

I decided to change my schedule and only work 4h/day because I constantly do a good amount of work.

Instead of working on building internal self-discipline, you took a drug (Poor man’s cocaine). Once drug become less efficient, you will need to look for stronger stimulants. In the meantime, you will lose the ability to focus without enhancers. It is terrible to advise here.

Get important work. We humans tend to avoid fake work.

This hits hard.

The problem is to get good enough to get jobs that let you do Important Work (TM), I need to do well at jobs which have a lot of Fake work.

Yeah it's difficult. Few people get the chance to work on really important work. A lot has to do with luck. Basically if you were not born in he right time then the chance going to be negligible. And even if you are in the right era you still have to be good.

I think this has something to do with mid life existential crisis in whcih pretty much everyone realizes that one's work is not important while one is drowned by all the social responsibility (kids, aging parents, etc.).

Deep work is a side effect of building strong internal self-discipline. There is a lot of useless advice on how to get into flow but these do not work because people lack discipline. With strong discipline, you can do deep work on tasks that you do no like or want to do in first place.

Start with waking up on same hour every day, after few weeks add eating healthy breakfast. After a month or two add going to sleep on specific time, then add minimum exercise etc. Gradually, you will build self disciple that would work across everything you do, including work.

Not on the company dime is by far the most effective way I’ve found.

I block out 3 hour chunks of time without any interruptions and work deeply on my personal projects.

During my day job, incessant meetings, status updates, slack and stand ups ensure I don’t do much (if any) deep work.

Cannabis.

Allows me to focus on tasks and really hit flow like I can't when in a "normal" state of mind. I'm not alone in this!

I've considered trying Adderall but who wants to get addicted to amphetamines?

I stay awake all night, then work at the morning next day. My brain is too tired to refuse to work at that point.

I do make sure to eat really well so I don't get tired physically.

Get a problem in my head, and then go do something else. Deep autopilot work.

Time block

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