Ask HN: Have you developed any habits to be more productive? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you developed any habits to be more productive?

35 pointssujayk_3335 comments

How does a productive day looks like for you? Do you start with certain set of tasks for a day and call it a day once you've completed them?

Also how do you tackle them because you aren't effective at all times of the day, so how do you classify/rank your to-dos and overall manage time

Share things/habits that you have developed by doing and improving and that worked for you and you'd like others to try.

Be more specific and tell how it worked out for you and why you think it worked.

Thanks in advance.

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Mine was to aggressively reduce overhead and reduce distractions.

The former means avoiding needy tech, and automating most regular tasks away. It's a lot easier to get things done if you don't pay a huge maintenance tax on your available energy.

It might only take a few minutes to renew a domain or update an SSL certificate, but it's something I need to do before I can get any work done. These little tasks can add up and drain you of your energy.

I kind of wrote about it here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/busy

The latter means shutting down all unnecessary noise, and only letting necessary noise through at the right times. Nothing should grab my attention until it needs to grab my attention. That involves a lot of ad block filters and email rules, and disabling lots of default behaviours from apps.

I wrote about it here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence

I just try to keep an eye on the little things that cause friction, and every once in a while, I fix them.

Great post and it hits the spot.

Productivity is something that interests me, and I'm always looking for ways to improve. Thanks for raising that question.

What worked for me

  - Having weekly therapy sessions 
  - Hiring an executive coach
  - Finding a routine that works for me, not stressing too much
  - Understanding myself and my goals
  - Cold baths in the evenings
  - Meditation (currently in progress)
  - Having an example of very productive people in my life

Finding a routine was the hardest part. I tried multiple things and eventually landed on something that I'm continuing to improve. Key takeaways are hiring professionals for chores (accounting, taxes, cleaning, cooking), not stressing too much, and not multitasking on multiple projects (meaning weekdays are only for work-related projects).

What didn't work

  - Surfing the internet for productivity tips
  - Creating TODO lists
  - Planning day in advance with calendar slots
  - Creating a schedule of any sort
  - Unrealistic expectations from myself and others

What I don't like about advice that you can look up on the internet, is that even if there is plenty of good information, it doesn't mean that it's relevant to your specific situation. It would be helpful at some point, but you need to figure out what is the next step right now.

AS a former software developer here is what worked for me:

* Measure things. You really have no idea how slow you are unless you have data to compare against.

* Test automation. If you have good test automation in place you are free to take wild chances on improvements because the risks to regression are very low. If you have no idea what you are breaking when working on a new feature you are wrong on many levels.

* Total Cost of Ownership. Combine the prior two bullet points and realize that slow software steals moments of your life in little pieces. You should be completely OCD about software performance. When software takes less time to execute it takes less time to test, which means you can test more frequently. If you can run all your E2E tests in under two minutes your approach to architecture and risk evaluation wildly changes in ways you cannot imagine.

* Be Critical. In my time writing software I have seen many people do stupid costly things frequently out of social conformance, perceptions of easiness, and cowardice. Don't be a coward. Ask tough questions both to yourself and others. Frequently ask yourself why the fuck am I doing this? If you cannot receive an absolutely amazing (primitive, but with evidence) answer to that question alarms should be screaming in your head. If you work in an office full of stupid I would raise some concerns or look for work elsewhere.

That last bullet point is why I no longer program for money. There are too many cowards writing JavaScript. If you cannot even vocalize devastating concerns without becoming a pariah its time to do something else in life.

> Measure things. You really have no idea how slow you are unless you have data to compare against.

Can you share some examples?

Test automation helps with this. When I wrote a test automation application I had each step output the time difference since the application started and I could look at the difference between steps to see something was taking too long. Now, keep in mind your test automation application cannot limited in performance to the thing it is testing. Nonetheless I was still able to get to about 300 tests in 8 seconds.

I would also recommend a perf tool that measures performance of a given operation as number of operations per second.

Also measure transmission speed. In HTTP that is easily measured as HTTP round trip, but I am bigger fan of WebSocket which requires some amount of tooling to really master.

Here is something I wrote about performance measuring just before I stopped doing JS work: https://github.com/prettydiff/wisdom/blob/master/performance...

Yes, but I don’t do these just for productivity

- Delete ALL social media. I just have hackernews. No Facebook, no reddit, Insta, Snapchat, TikTok etc

- Get rid of TV

- Get a dumb phone (don’t have it now but did at one point)

- Make a budget, track incoming income and all expenses. This allows you to ask the question, what is the goal/desire of my productivity?

So with all that, I’m pretty productive

I found budgeting really unproductive and ended up costing more money ("I need to use up my gaming budget! I need a big enough monthly budget to cover the next sale!").

Taking from systems design, monitor stocks, not flows. Make several bank accounts (digital banks are good for this), watch how much money is in those accounts, and whether they're going up and down. It's more suited for the human brain. If the numbers are moving in an unexpected way, then you can check each one.

Can you elaborate on the second point? Sounds like an interesting dynamic but I don’t understand..

Oh, I assumed most people were familiar with systems theory. It's one of the more useful math stuff to pick up. I strongly recommend reading Thinking in Systems if you haven't.

Flows are movement. Money in, money out. Heating. Leakage of heat. Turning on the water tap. Draining water. Mining oil. Selling oil.

Stocks are how much is there. Money in the bank. Debt unpaid. Temperature of the room. Water in the bathtub.

For some reason, we like to measure flow even though it doesn't help much and it's actually the hardest to measure. You can't measure economic health by taxes paid, and it's hard to estimate whether a room will be warm based on how hot the heater is.

Stocks are easiest to measure. And they're effective too. Most flows are based on stock. If you took a historical count of stocks or flows and tried to model the future, flows are not good because they don't take into account structural changes. You may have a steady expense and income and suddenly it changes - maybe you're on the brink of divorce, maybe you're moving to a new city. People are likely to worry about how much the new rent is but don't account much for how much new income they make from the move. Or vice versa - they underestimate new expenses and overestimate new income.

Flows are good at predicting near term, bad at long term, and terrible at figuring out a solution.

More likely, it's based on other stocks - you spend more when at certain health levels, or based on the amount of money in a bank account, or perhaps your perception of the economic climate. If I have a windfall, I pay debts until my balance is a certain number. Or I buy meals for friends and family. Or give to charity, etc.

If things are tight, I don't spend, even though most of the time not spending means I have more to spend. It's based on some other stock, like how many people are on Slack, indicating how likely I am to lose my job or get a promotion.

So the easiest way to monitor is by having a bunch of different money stock (bank accounts) and monitor whether they're going up or down.

It works well for me. We’re very frugal, so we know how much we usually spend and set a fixed limit per expense +- a small amount. That’s it. We review every time an expense or income changes, so usually monthly.

We have multiple accounts (food+fuel, bills, apartment, fun money) and we put the exact same amounts into each account each week.

Anything left at the end of the week gets moved to overflow accounts (food+fuel overflow, bills overflow, apartment overflow, etc) and anything in overflow accounts at the end of each month gets moved into savings as bonus savings.

We have 4 savings accounts. Short term, mid term, long term, retirement. We always put the same amount into these each week.

And then as our expenses decrease, or incomes increase, we just put a higher percentage into savings.

It works pretty well, we are the only couple I know who could purchase a home at our age in this environment in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I earn about 115% more than average worker, but my partner earns about 80% of the average worker.

Our situation and savings and spending discipline has allowed us both to drop 1 full day a week of employment.

We have only been out of university for 4 years

Get a really good personal trainer.

Top tip: I asked my physio to recommend a coach and they found me a great one.

1. Just having an appointment forces me to get up and go 3 days a week.

2. Having a trainer means you have a spotter so you can lift in safety

3. Having a trainer plan your sessions means it’s incredibly efficient both in ROI and overall time spent vs improvement.

If like me you are a remote tech worker sat at a desk most of the day, physical training will literally add years to your life.

Also it will make sure your younger years are high quality years where you can do whatever you want, have more energy, reduce/ avoid illnesses and diseases etc.

Lifting will help increase bone density and keep them healthy as you get older which is a huge part of getting “frail” as you age.

I have a huge toolbox of techniques I use to keep on top of my productivity. I think I am an averagely productive person, which is a huge achievement for me as I struggle with ADHD.

Having systems for things helps immensely. Use a calendar, write things in the calendar as much as possible. Use some kind of to do list to keep track of what tasks are on your plate.

These systems will work well 90% of the time. Be mentally prepared for the 10% of the time when they don't. Accept that you might use the system "wrong" like writing a todo in the calendar because it will remind you of something important at the right time.

Reduce distractions with blocking software, but don't try to use blocking software as a replacement for self-control. Chrome plugins that let you access YouTube but hide the "related videos" feed are great. You can click on a YouTube video, watch the content and then stay on the task. Trying to lock yourself out of all possibly distracting sites usually just results in going to even more extreme lengths to circumvent the block. It's very "binge/purge cycle".

When planning, try to predict road blocks, both internal and external. We often write plans with the perfect happy path in mind. If your plan is to jog to the gym in the morning, what will you do when it's pouring with rain? If you plan to study programming all afternoon but your neighbor decides it's time for a 5 hour drumming session, where will you go? You want to try some new hobby, what will you do when you feel anxious driving up the first session? Getting good at predicting and planning around problems is a fantastic skill. You'll start noticing your emotional state more and noticing how it affects your productivity too. Nervous? Anxious? Angry? They can all throw you off your game (this is the biggest part of ADHD in my opinion, you're dealing with a storm of emotions that you aren't very good at handling when trying to complete necessary tasks. Many procrastination behaviors stem from this)

As for tools: if in doubt, use a pen and paper. A small notebook and pen is an incredibly versatile and flexible device that is also cheap and low distraction. If you don't have a good reason to choose something else, start with pen and paper.

I have 1 list of things to do. It is all on paper. When they are done they get struck out. That's it.

Simple, effective.

"Productivity" can be a frustrating term. Because there are things we have to do and things we want to do.

When I supported my own code I'd "feel" like a productive day was when I programmed (what I wanted to do) versus support (which I has to do.) When I (finally) realized that support was part of my job, I could see that as productivity.

30 years on I'll still wake up with an idea of what I'm working on today, the get hijacked by a bug report or whatever. Come the end of the day I still haven't started my plan for the day, but nevertheless I was productive.

I kinda see zoom meetings in the same way. Mostly I'm on mute, multi-tasking some other mundane thing, but just being in the meeting is 'being productive' - at least to the people scheduling the meetings.

So now, if a manager asks me "what did I accomplish" I start by boasting about my meeting productivity. "I was in 14 meetings this week, for 10 hours of my time. I did ad-hoc support for 4 issues raised by other managers. I spent 3 hours this week on this project. In those 3 hours I did xxxx."

One colleague of mine had 11 meetings scheduled for a day. Clearly he got a lot of work done because meetings are work...

But i digress. To be more "productive" whatever that means to you, figure out what distracts you and cut back on that.

Join a company which measures productivity in the way you do. It took me 10 years to find one. When people say do what you love, it really means doing what you're in alignment with.

What works for me:

1. Take a shower & brush teeth twice a day. Have all clothes in a clear area that I can take with my eyes closed. All the hygiene stuff should be automatic.

2. Two lists - to do & schedule. I like weekly scheduling. I list everything I plan to do in the week and then drop them by day. Because I tend to put things off until 4 PM and then have a burst of energy to finish them. Some do better scheduling every hour of the day. To do is just a stack you dump into and pull from. Don't fill it out too long.

3. Finish stuff. 95% done stuff lingers on the mind and drains energy, when you should just push it to 100%.

4. Clean up everything for 15 min at the end of the day. Also clears the mind. No more than 15 min. Dump email, slack, etc into your To Do or Schedule. If I don't have time to clean up, it's an alarm bell saying I lost control.

5. Batch non-maker time and be present. We found out we were losing 2 days per week to interruptions and stuff, and these meetings and interruptions weren't useful because nobody paid attention. So we batched Monday and Wednesday as meeting days. Find the right tempo for your workflow - you might need 3 days, you might need a few hours. If you work hybrid, then office days are your non-maker times.

What I'd like to do: Build workouts into (1) as well.

Simple.

Each and every night, write a TODO list.

This will help you focus yourself in the morning

This was huge for me. I say some time aside at the end of the day and prioritize the next day’s tasks.

Biggest thing I ever noticed was when I started using notion for everything. Don't think it's specific to notion - more just if you don't have a system, and you make a system, any system, you'll see a big difference.

I went to therapy. Figured out that a lot of the things I blamed on ADHD were actually learned behaviours from childhood to try and keep people around me happy and my life free of conflict. I started to learn that I didn't need to reply every email, slack, teams, whatever immediately. I didn't spend so much time listening to the critical voice in my head running me down. I can do things that are good for me and take care of myself. My life didn't need to always be on the edge of crisis. It's taken a long time but I feel like things are better these days. I certainly have an easier time working.

I have developed a habit of checking my calendar while brushing my teeth in the morning. This ensures that I keep track of events for the day and the week. I have ADD and constantly forget about birthdays, meetings, and plans.

The first thing I do when I start work is connect with my body-doubling partner, and I stay connected with them for the whole day. This helps manage my hedonistic procrastination and allows me to be productive for 7 hours a day. Without body doubling, my productivity drops to 2-3 hours a day. Disclaimer: I co-founded a body-doubling platform (https://workmode.net/), so I might be a bit biased ;-)

Next, I go through my mailbox and Asana to create a to-do list of tasks I plan to work on. I don't use Asana for my daily to-do list as it's too distracting; there's just too much going on there. We have a simple to-do list app on WorkMode, which works well for me. Pen & paper would work well too.

I try to tackle simple and short tasks first to get into the flow and reduce focus pollution. It's good to have as few tasks in the back of my head as possible.

I always set a three-minute timer whenever I take a bio break. If things don't happen within three minutes, they won't happen in fifteen either. This saves me a good 20-30 minutes every day.

Whenever I have an idea, I write it down in Asana. I learned this trick while reading about the GTD method, and it works pretty well for me. Once the idea is stored somewhere, it no longer occupies my attention.

At the end of the day, I make notes of what I am/was doing, why I was doing it, and what I should do next. It's surprisingly effective, and it shortens the time I need to spend the next day resuming work.

I don't use fancy productivity apps. While working with procrastinators on WorkMode, we learned that fancy, complex apps rarely work. If Pomodoro doesn't work for someone, it just won't work, no matter the app they use. If a to-do list doesn't make someone more productive, Monday won't change that. The same goes for calendars, note-taking apps, and all other "productivity" apps.

Regular exercise. When you seriously make it a priority, it starts to positively affect the rest of your life.

That sounds like a ChatGPT prompt

LoL, I noticed that just now that and you're right, it does sound like it but it's a genuine questions

I am still struggling to manage my productivity. I have noticed that when I am not physically fit due to lack of cardio exercise, my productivity suffers. Therefore, my strategy is to engage in at least 150 minutes of exercise per week.

Mine was to learn to give myself a break. Incorporate short breaks into work schedule helps me to maintain focus.

I’ve been experimenting with this for the last six months. I find some days the pomodoro technique to be a game changer, other days it seems to get in the way. It’s been hard to correlate my experiences with real data, and I suspect it has a lot to do with the activities I’m trying to do for the day.

I will say I keep coming back to it, so that actually says a lot for it.

Intervalllength should decrease from start of the week to end of the week.

Did I pay attention to my kids? 100% otherwise 0%

more productive than what?

Than the time you were not

you can spend one minute less flirting with the receptionist, or go take a coffee when theres no risk of being caught in chit chat or gossipping, or just dont wash your hands after going to the bathroom, youll spare 30s of your valuable productivity...you productivity maniacs have to realize theres a give and take, theres only so much you can optimize, if you go over a certain point other thing start to break down...why are you not producing 24/7? not because you wouldnt want to do it, but because its physically impossible...make yourself a favor, get a life

This is rather unhelpful comment. People struggle with productivity, some suffer from chronic procrastination. There is nothing wrong with trying to improve one's productivity.

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