Ask HN: How do you create productive habits?

Read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. He has some good suggestions. One of the best ideas in there is that certain small habit changes create behavioral cascades. For people trying to lose weight, just writing down what they eat at each meal has a huge effect. When you make up in the morning, making your bed increases the likelihood that you'll do other things that require discipline. The idea is to get many small wins, because they accumulate and give you momentum to tackle harder and harder tasks. When you draw up your goals, the trick is to state the goal, imagine the obstacle that might prevent you from achieving it, and then figure out what you'll do in that scenario. That's the thinking behind the WOOP app: http://www.woopmylife.org/ which I'm not affiliated with, fwiw. Finally, in your HN profile set "noprocrast" to yes. ;)

I recommoned BJ Fogg's tiny habits course: http://tinyhabits.com/. It's a really simple and easy free email course that shows one way of creating new habits.

How do you like those two apps? I'm currently trying out strides, but it seems like I only use it when I'm logging stuff. I'm kind of wondering if a paper calendar would be better to keep the logs right in front of me.

By being interested in what you are working on.

Ok here's an obvious list of things that should be useful. Obviously you agree (as I do) with the Leo Babuta concept of 'habits' versus 'discipline' [0]. I'd say these are just the basis - but I believe all of them will help if you can apply them consistently. But I'd also say that there's not much point in trying other techniques until you feel you've consistently tried these for a year or more (potentially I'd say up to a life time of trying).

1. Headspace (daily meditation) [1] - helps with focus

2. Wait But Why on procrastination [2]

3. 4 Ways to get motivated [3] - I like the second one about a 'pre-game routine' doing the same physical activity just before starting work. I do the yoga 'sun salutation' twice (takes about 5 minutes, helps with back problems)

4. Leo Babuta's free 'Focus' book [4]

  [0]: http://zenhabits.net/discipline/
  [1]: https://headspace.com
  [2]: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
  [3]: http://plan.io/blog/post/146892730063/4-ways-to-get-motivated-when-you-dont-feel-like
  [4]: http://focusmanifesto.com/

Personally, I'm a big fan of "Baby Steps" by Dr. Leo Marvin. It means setting small, reasonable goals for yourself, one day at a time, one tiny step at a time. Just set up long range plans and when executing, focus on the immediate step you are facing. Baby steps.

I keep this on my desk, in a spot where my eyes land whenever my head starts to wander: https://bwitzenhausen.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/butler-wal...

"First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice."

I find it useful (essential, really) to understand how my todo tasks relate to my longterm goals. If I can't draw a line from my task to my goals, then it's less motivating.

Can I hijack and ask, how do I become a "determined" person with grit? Is it learnable? If something becomes too hard, I just convince myself the success is not worth it or not attainable.

I might actually be right. Success might not be worth it. It seems winners are usually more motivated by hatred and fear of losing / failure than the joy of winning. You see this with sports stars all the time (MJ).

After years of trying to learn Japanese through osmosis by living here, this year I managed to get myself to seriously study again despite not going to school anymore.

It's a combination of a study app called Nihongo and a reminder/streak app called Commit. Now after studying about 30 mins daily for 6 months I've started to really enjoy my study sessions, and the joy of seeing the characters I've learned in my daily life. Now when the Commit reminder comes up I've usually already started my study.

When I really have to work I use a chess clock. Old fashioned, mechanical, large and an ugly reminder of my time 'off the clock' because then the other clock starts to tick. The ratio between those two is the thing to maximize and it's extremely easy to use. Stop working just push one button, start working press again on the opposite side.

Very useful little trick and way easier to use than anything online or in an 'app'.

Pomodoro technique [1].

Break your time/tasks into 25-minute chunks, where you focus on a single task (no context-switching, pauses, breaking). Rinse, repeat.

I use Flat Tomato on the iPhone, and I can track how many pomodoros I complete each day/month, which gives a good feedback as to my goal tracking.

[1] http://caps.ucsd.edu/Downloads/tx_forms/koch/pomodoro_handou...

Constrain the time you have to do something.

Work often fills the time you give it. If you try to achieve something in a short amount of time, you'll be forced to work at 100% with full focus to get it done ASAP. I'm always amazed at how sometimes a dreadful task takes 10-20 minutes when I'm forced to do it in that timespan, but if I have an hour to do it, it'll take an hour.

To make the constraint feel real, put yourself in a situation where you only have a short period of time before something else must happen, like a meeting. Then you can trick yourself to get started and see how far you can get in 20 minutes.

  [1]: http://www.raptitude.com/2015/03/how-to-get-yourself-to-do-things/

I've personally had success with starting small and simple. I pick a habit that promises improvements and do one small and simple thing every day related to it. As it becomes a habit I can see results and adjust accordingly.

The best habit I have formed is to see the benefits of actions and forcing me every day to do them (by starting small and simple).

Its not a race. It takes time. Sometimes years. Be kind to yourself. You will make mistakes. Identify the mistake and learn from it. Then move on.

Have something I really, really want to do, and do that thing until it's done. Sort of the top idea in your mind: http://paulgraham.com/top.html.

For me, this typically involves a lot of analysis as to what the obstacles are. There are typically multiple things conspiring to turn me into a slacker and it doesn't generally work to just knuckle down and do it. Figuring out the underlying causes and addressing those is what works for me.

So, you might try spending some time asking yourself 'Why?' x, y or z is failing to get done. Be really honest with yourself. Don't tell yourself anything PC. Then, if you still want to get it done, solve those issues first.

Beeminder (https://www.beeminder.com/overview#how_beeminder_works) has been life-changing for me, taking me from zero to working out 3x/week and meditating 4x/week, and currently helping me learn to blog more regularly.

It's in the same category (habit formation) as Daisy and Streaks but with a somewhat power-usery focus. You commit to any number of quantifiable goals (e.g. "work out three times a week for the next 6 months"), it reminds you to stay on track, and if you fall behind, actually charges you money. The idea is to tie your long-term goal ("work out regularly") to your short-term sense of immediate priority ("work out today or it'll cost ya").

One of the reasons it works for me is that it fits with a flexible schedule. I don't have to work out at 8am every Monday; I just have to work out sometime early in the week. I can build up a "backlog" and "spend" it later. Conversely if I have a crappy week and let habits slide, it reminds me to make up for it the following week.

The Beeminder team also blogs regularly on the subject of habit formation and self-control - e.g. http://blog.beeminder.com/flexbind/ which goes into more detail on why they've designed the system the way they have.

Work on something you would be really excited to work on even if you were a retired billionaire. Great projects pull work out of you.

The important thing is not to fool yourself into working on something you think you're excited about but deep down are really not that excited about.

Personally speaking, no apps helped me beat procrastination. What actually helped me a lot is figuring out that I am unhappy and depressed in my life and why is that. Once I figured that out I set for big changes, and stopped caring a lot for things that made me unhappy. I appreciated things I got, I started going on trips around the world and met my wife. After being happy in life I found my self in a very positive mood and very keen to explore things and not just sit in-front of a computer browsing youtube or other things that didn't help me in life.

Another thing that helped me a lot, although am a software engineer and I write code for a living, I said I'll only use computers, phones and whatsoever while I am at work. When am off work I am completely off tech, including TV. That forces me to enjoy time with my wife and go out do things, workout etc. Now of course this might not work if your goal is to make research or I don't know create app's per se or your own company. Although making sure that your hobby, goals, work whatever that is only takes part of your time a day and not the whole day tends to help into having a balanced life.

Good luck.

Edit: also something I forgot to mention those apps you mentioned might work for some people that like task specific programs etc, personally I find it that I couldn't program my life at all, I'd rather having it in a natural flow than having appointments with life, but thats just me, I see people that are quite happy with having a schedule.

Highly recommend reading The Power of Habit (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055PGUYU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...)

It goes over strategies and psychology of habits and how to change bad ones and form good ones. I literally just finished this book before opening HN to see this, and I loved it.

HabitBull(http://www.habitbull.com/) is great app for this. It also ties into quantified self analysis pretty well. I had some great luck with implementing GTD with Omnifocus and Focus GTD for personal projects.

My phone's calendar app has become crucial to me. Recurring tasks - work cycles, fitness, etc. - get a recurring block, with a well-defined start and end time. Non-programmed to-dos("remember to bring a..." "don't forget to take care of...") are accomplished by throwing in the task somewhat arbitrarily at a moment in the future when I might be able to do it. Between those two I always "find the time" to work on what I intended to work on and my stress about what needs doing goes way down, while my consistency goes up.

Sometimes the schedule slips or I sleep in and let a bunch of tasks slide; this is an expected failure mode and I build it into how I use the calendar. I do not think about strategies to be productive anymore - my maximum capacity per day is acknowledged by setting those start and end times, and if I want to produce a lot then I aim for consistency.

I have to say, Google Inbox has utterly changed my life with its Reminders feature

Change is very hard ..

my favorite:

ALAN DEUTSCHMAN :Change or Die (2005)

http://www.fastcompany.com/52717/change-or-die

I wrote an application that I use for exactly this purpose: https://github.com/ioddly/meditations

It's a little rough around the edges at the moment, and there are no executable builds, but it tracks completion so that you get a big picture view. For example it tells me I have exercised 9 days this month, 100% of the days I've set out for this month, and am on a streak of 100+ days.

Aside from that, meditation and removing distracting things from my environment have been most important (for example blocking timesink websites on my work computer). And the work of James Clear has been very influential on all of this: http://jamesclear.com/