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Comment by jmiskovic | Hacker News Reader

"One weird trick" for me is keeping a work journal. A simple text file that gets filled with one-liners: what I'm doing, what tasks remain, what angles I already tried to solve the problem at hand. It keeps me on track and more importantly it takes away the mental burden of remembering the wider context. When I switch away from the browser I can continue the work right where I left it off on the last line of the journal. At the end of the working day I can actually evaluate what I accomplished and what I planned to do.

That said, I only write the journal when I'm chronically distracted. Most often due to lack of sleep. On good days I just become so engrossed in the problem that hours just swoosh by.

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Lack of sleep is my killer. The effort to figure things out has me hunting for dopamine and on sites like HN.

I hate it, the days I feel truly alive are when I'm totally focused and smashing out code. Only they're so rare now that I have a family and so many responsibilities outside of writing code.

Second that. I often find myself with the worst self-control late at night or after a few beers.

Young kids mean you can't prevent the tiredness and productivity suffers especially when working from home.

I used to drink a couple of beers at home at night from time to time. We used to buy them in the supermarket with my wife. I thought it was normal, but it isn't. This year I have completely stopped my alcohol intake, I stopped buying beer in the supermarket, and for the first time ever in my life I have been able to control my sleep schedule. I also feel less tired.

Maybe give it a try.

I'm not 100% against alcohol - but in the moment I only drink in social settings never alone at home. Not even one beer.

With all the posts and debates lately on this site about the health "evils" of alcohol, this is the most important thing to note about the substance: It absolutely kills your focus.

Don't quit to "be healthy", as the ill health effects are overblown and highly conflated with other poor lifestyle factors in heavy drinkers.

Quit because the GABA receptor agonism completely wrecks your ability to focus and sleep deeply.

I don't have a regular sleep problem as such, I train regularly so am usually pretty tired. Just on the occasion I have too many or interrupted sleep due to kids or whatever, self-control goes out the window.

I got to the point where drinking wasn't worth it for me. I've had no issues with over indulgence but it still gets me.

There was a period where I'd have 3 or 4 ciders a week. I put on weight like you wouldn't believe.

Then there is snoring, if I have one beer that night my wife won't be able to sleep.

I just don't really drink now.

Filling out timesheets does wonders for this, even if you're not billing per hour. The mere act of writing down what you've done makes you so much more aware of where your time's going.

A big shot once told me just write down what you are doing every hour, that will help you eliminate what you shouldn't be doing.

Planning never goes right, but you can always plan what not to do.

I do the same using org-mode in Emacs. It is a plain text: you can start simple and then gets as complex and fancy as you like. https://youtu.be/hnMntOQjs7Q

Funny note, John Carmack did (does?) a little bit like you. He wrote everyday little notes about the day. You can find them on the Internet back to the very old days up to kind of recently.

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