I think something missing from the list is "learn to say no".
This is not necessarily a very positive sounding message, but when you are pulled left and right to support or help people, you do not get anything on your personal task list done.
There is a right balance to find because in a way by helping, the whole team is progressing. Try to teach people how to fish rather that giving them a fish.
On that note, postpone noncritical shit as long as you can stomach. 9 times out of 10 it will resolve itself and you'll find you didn't really care about the result.
As someone who works with someone who does this; please be aware that there are other people depending on you to do what you've said you're going to do. You not doing it just means I end up having to do it on top of my own work.
To rephrase maccard's comment: postpone it explicitly rather than explicitly.
If you silently chip the task into the tall grass, then they are left with ambiguity and frustration. If you are explicit, then you give them an opportunity to convince you of its value. If you respect them as a colleague, listen to them and argue with them. If you don't respect them, talk to your manager so they stop coming to you.
I meant noncritical like cleaning out your closet, donating that pile of clothes you never wear, or doing the dishes.
At work, the correct response is to consult a project manager person and ask: "Which project would you like me to deprioritize, in favor of this new project?". There are people whose entire job it is to balance stakeholder concerns and decide what you should be working on today/this week/this month/this quarter. Use them.
If you're in a position or organization where that's your job, then make your priorities public. When someone asks you to do X, explain that you're already doing Y. If you can't come to an ad-hoc agreement about priorities, talk to a higher up.
If you're the last higher up in the chain, then, shit man, hire more people.
But the basic principle is this: If it's not on the roadmap, why are you working on it? If it's not the next most important thing on the roadmap, why are you working on it?
On the other hand, assiduously doing ONLY what the PM has designated to the exclusion of everything else is a recipe for misery and organizational dysfunction.
There has to be some slack for creativity, problem-solving, and some unstructured collaboration. I run into problems all the time in a "cross-functional" role with people who refuse to lift their nose from the grindstone unless specifically commanded by their boss.
Of course, "Use your judgement". I try to fulfill small asks quickly, as time permits. For bigger asks, I work with the person to get them slotted into the roadmap.
Same approach for bugs. If something comes up where it's not absolutely clear that it's a critical production bug, I go ask the roadmap guy whether this is more or less critical than what I'm working on.
The idea isn't that he's my boss and I only do ahat he says, but that he has broader insight into the business and criticality of various things. Sometimes something can be terribe and critical and everyone gets up in a huff, but it's still not worth doing instead of the business critical project you're working on.
"learn to say no" is critically important, but can seriously damage relationships with colleagues. I have found that it is important to explain very carefully and ahead of time why you will often be saying no, and try to mitigate its impact by, for example, having a disciplined daily window when you're saying "yes" a lot or queuing work for that slot when it is not 100% urgent (ascertaining the real urgency of requests is also a major skill). I have found that it is possible to improve one's own productivity, but reduce team morale, when I am seen as obstructive or not a team player when I "NO" too much without mitigation / explantion. Said explanation should always include reasoning about why your progress is aligned with team progress, even obliquely, but it can be a tough balance.
I think it is important to focus on an achievable list of tasks each day, otherwise you can easily get overwhelmed. Getting items closed each day makes me feel effective.
My personal "hack" is to focus on no more than 5 tasks per day (apart from all of my regular everyday work tasks), and I am building an MVP to track those: https://five.today/
I honestly get a great feeling from a completed list at the end of each day (but I don't always get there!).
Yeah, and I think that a cause of procrastinating is the idea that as soon as you start on something your time will be occupied for the next few hours/days/whatever by it and therefore you will not start, because you have other things to do too and you feel you need to first plan out the expected time you need for the thing you want to start, and then procrastination starts. It doesn't have to be, if you start on something you can stop anytime you want and start later again by only surviving the first 2 seconds. You can do this as many times as you want. This way you don't feel something will take over your life and needs planning and you are able to do other things too, etc.
What helps me is a moderate dose of amphetamines. It takes me from being someone who steps over something on the floor for a week because he's to lazy to put it away to writing code for 56 hours straight.
And the code isn't actually bad. The real problem is that it also makes you into a perfectionist who starts to write his own jpeg library if he finds anything about libjpg that he does't like.
Sadly, this doesn't seem to do much for me. I can be 20 minutes into the task and really want to stop it. I think this only applies to certain kinds of personalities.
Worse, I remember that I disliked the task through its entirety and I'm very acutely aware of that and start associating starting it with a bad experience.
I would have the same problem if I started doing things I don't like. I'm fortunate I can do things I like, but that's because I made sure I can do things I like. And that started by quitting doing things I didn't like.
I think that's a good philosophy to have, but there are still many things that I don't like, such as cleaning. I don't see any way to resolve that outside of hiring a housekeeper, which is not really worth it at the moment. Not to mention all the people in the world who definitely don't have such resources.
It might seem obvious but "Try to get something done every day" is a very good advice. You can apply this to anything. Just take one step every day and you will eventually reach your goal. The hard part is always to start. If you "start" every day it will soon become effortless. Pick up your guitar, write some lines of code, go to the gym, etc.
I dont know if its just me, I have the opposite problem. For me its very hard to finish things properly. I have the motivation to start and get 80 percent there but then there is no more pull to polish things further.
I got the same problem. But I'm going to start working on my project instead of telling you to start working on yours. And with start I mean not start a new project, but actually pick up where I left it.
Is it because you have done all the interesting stuff or because you got distracted with something else (or had to stop working on it) and you don't feel like working on it again?
Yeah, I feel most of the interesting stuff is in the beginning to somewhere around half-way, and then I'm never as motivated to see it to completion because the "research" part is done.
One chronic problem with productivity on side-projects that I have always had is valuing what you are doing. With a fresh start towards an idea, motivation run high, mind is pumped up to work and you are terribly excited to get the thing out of the door.
Fast forward few more days or weeks, you're unexcited, you think this is hopelessly daft, you think no will care about it, and slowly de-motivation creeps in.
I recently started a small blog to write research based articles on interesting questions with a goal of putting a few posts per month but it seems I am far behind my aim. I was excited about writing my last post[1] but gradually, it faded into self-doubt — the writing style is in-consistent and poor, the points are not strong, research is shallow — most of which come when I see how others write and inevitably start comparing them with mine. I did end up finishing the post but I just don't value what I did.
It seems the timeframe between starting and finishing should be as short as possible. The breaks just kill the spirit.
That reminds me of an idea by Ira Glass (This American Life): when you start learning something (i. e. writing), what improves most is taste. Actual competence takes longer to develop.
The result is a (possibly ten-year long) period where you can clearly recognize that your work sucks but you don't have the ability (yet) to not suck.
Too much in a hurry now, but you should find the original. It's a beautiful short essay if I remember correctly. Or maybe he did it as a song or a play – I only remember it was good.
I can write Perl code in Clojure before I know how not to write Perl code in Clojure.
Actually that saying goes back at least to old FORTRAN programmers from the 60s vs C programmers in the 70s and their ability to write recognizable FORTRAN in C (whaddya mean that in C a variable named i isn't implicitly defined as an int by its very name? and so on).
Thats the pessimistic view. The optimistic view is writing A in B gives you a chance to learn B by replacing small parts of emulated A with bare metal B. Good luck when you scale up and the major architecture of the problem is different when written in A vs B, that won't be as simple as swapping out things.
One of my favorite quotes / ideas that always hits close to home. He continues this thought with the observation that most people in those situations never get past this point...and give up, while only a few keep pushing despite their perceived mediocrity, which is a key part of this thought in my opinion.
Here's the full quote: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
> Fast forward few more days or weeks, you're unexcited, you think this is hopelessly daft, you think no will care about it, and slowly de-motivation creeps in.
Maybe the idea was not so good after all. That is not a bad thing. Keep on rocking.
I know this well and the key is yo design a process that provides a sense of completion as well as feedback.
For example, instead of writing one long post per month, you write one small one each week.
The long monthly post is more difficult to pull off because the payoff is so far off, and requires so much more. It isn't the writing that is difficult, but persisting in writing.
If you divide work in smaller, more frequent units you can get more stuff done over time. Also, you can go back and combine these small units as building blogs for something bigger.
I actually believe that this iterative approach is how everything is created.
> For example, instead of writing one long post per month, you write one small one each week.
> The long monthly post is more difficult to pull off because the payoff is so far off, and requires so much more. It isn't the writing that is difficult, but persisting in writing.
That's interesting, because in this case, I would actually recommend the opposite: instead of trying to put out an article a week, write an article a month. He said:
> the writing style is in-consistent and poor, the points are not strong, research is shallow — most of which come when I see how others write and inevitably start comparing them with mine. I did end up finishing the post but I just don't value what I did.
Quality research and writing takes time. With experience comes skill, and that can reduce the time it takes, but if you're not there yet, going faster won't make the product better. And if you're discouraged because of lack of quality, putting out equal or worse quality won't help motivation.
Instead, slow down. Pick a topic you're really interested in, that you think will help others in a significant way, and spend a whole month on it. Work on it for 30-60 minutes a day; if you average 45 minutes a day for a month, that's around 20 hours. You can research and write something worth reading in 20 hours, and you can give yourself enough time to do it well, with proofreading and even gathering feedback.
In other words, take the time to do work you can be proud of. If your only deadline is self-imposed, why rush? There is a never-ending supply of fluff on the Internet, and adding your own fluff won't make any difference in the end. As an amateur writer--one who does it for the love of writing--take the time to do it right; it's a luxury many writers would envy.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that any piece taking on a rich, challenging topic needs to be a few thousand words at least. Anything less means that important rebuttals go unaddressed and evidence gets cherry-picked. If you can fit your prescription for Syria into a 500 word column, you can't possibly have included enough information to lead your readers to an informed conclusion. At best you've offered an idea without claiming to prove it, at worst you've tossed off a handful of facts and pretended to rigor.
If you want good small, frequent posts, you'd better keep your scope similarly small. Tell me about a campaign speech and its significance, but don't diagnose the entire election. Or pick a settled technical topic and just be didactic, but be prepared to research every sentence.
It's fun to write bold, strident essays on a topic, but it doesn't do very much. The value-added part is the fact-finding and fact-checking slog, and I think a lot of people (myself included) underestimate just how much more time goes into researching a good essay than actually writing it. Just as you said, a good work on a big topic takes tens of hours, even to address one aspect.
For me, this means that I abandon a lot of work - I care enough to write about it (fun), but not enough to firmly ground that writing (exhausting). So I try to either escape the problem with speculative writing, or judge my interest early on and decide whether to follow through before wasting time.
So when I hear someone say that the analysis in their writing is weak, and their research is shallow, I'm hopeful! It means that they're writing with enough self-awareness to actually seek the truth.
"you think this is hopelessly daft, you think no will care about it, and slowly de-motivation creeps in."
When you get here, start talking to other people about it. Run it by your pals, your internet friends, whoever, see if they think it's good. If they like it and give you positive feedback (hey I'd use that library! I'd play that game) then it's both encouragement and a sign that you'll have at least something of a receptive audience for it when you're done.
One thing that helps is focusing on how this improves your life.
Even if all your writing does is clarify things in your head, that's progress. You are better because of it.
Don't bother iterating and polishing the writing if you don't feel like it. Move to another post or write on the same subject again with a clear head.
Also, do not underestimate the quality of your work. It is often good enough for people who are not at your level.
There is so much work out there I now think is mediocre but used to believe was amazing/awesome/life-changing.
Making personal progress is more important than doing nothing and stagnating.
I've found that, myself included, a lot of the focus on how to "get things done" in the tech community comes down to tips and tricks. Focus using this technique, break things down, follow GTD, use this productivity software, use that todo list, etc.
With a team, working on a project, you have some nice extrinsic motivation. A team relying on you, maybe deadlines to meet, customers to please, a paycheck to work for, etc.
But for side projects, even though I knew all the tricks, I still had a really tough time actually doing anything for a couple of years. I had a couple of projects that I was super motivated for and completed over a couple of weeks, but most of my time outside of that was wholly unproductive.
The thing that was missing for me was the why, the long-term vision. If I was working on something now that has little value to me in that moment or the days following, I found it hard to find motivation to keep going.
What I found boost my initial productivity the most was actually conjuring up the motivation. After that, it's a series of small wins in increasing that productivity through software, tips, tricks, support groups, etc. Without the motivation, though, no amount of tools will get things done for you.
Definitely agree! But you need to find it in yourself a driving reason to put in the hard work.
Tell a depressed, unmotivated person with no goals to just "work hard" and see how far that gets you. There needs to be some reason to do something rather than nothing.
I'm not a doctor, but I think part of the advice for certain types of depression e.g. people who have let their home get so untidy that they are overwhelmed at the thought of ever getting it tidy again, and very similar to advice for breaking writer's block, is just to make a start, and let the small amounts of progress form a reinforcement to continue.
This is true, but it's almost never structured as "just do the work". If anything, it's the opposite framing: do a little bit, just this one isolated task, and see the progress you make.
Pressfield's "do the work" annoys me, because it undervalues the importance of energy and a goal. It's a great approach to make reliable progress and fight distraction, but it's badly inadequate to the task of creating activity in the first place.
Hard work and habit are far more ephemeral than motivation is. Motivation is at the core of all and any activity and anyone saying they do not have any motivation and are just working hard are manipulating semantics. Motivation is absolutely paramount to take care of to do anything because if you don't have it your hard work will instantly evaporate.
It's a very fundamental condition. You can't do away with it. Being low on energy doesn't mean you're not motivated.
Hard work, habits, etc., are extremely relative things from what I've seen, and it's still not well understood what they mean and how they work.
Can we please stop worshiping someone's conviction from a book?
BJ Fogg [1] has done a ton of research on habit formation. I successfully used some of it to form simple habits like daily exercise, house chores, etc. Still, you need a reason to get going. I want to drop my body fat to 12%. Sounds stupid, but keeps me going...
I have read both books. Couldn't stop asking "Why is he waging this daily "war" with the imaginary evil, instead of spending his life on something more enjoyable?" This guy is either insane or has a pretty big hairy "why".
The "why" is often summed as "will this make my life better and by how much?"
I agree that "grinding it out" doesn't apply to creative work. You can have a time block dedicated to writing and produce nothing because you feel the activity is pointless/meaningless.
If you don't see how the end result will make your life better, you will never make progress. Worse, you will get depressed by the meaninglessness of it all and be tempted to self sabotage existing efforts.
Long term goals are an existential crisis because every fiber in your body just wants to say "Fuck it", give up and indulge into immediate unfullfilling gratification.
Intentional self destructive behavior is pretty much any activity that says "Fuck you future self". Often, it requires reflection on your attitude and outlook on the future.
There is way more advice in David Allen's well-known book Getting Things Done, and there are many things to help with this like the Action Day Planner notebook.
Allen's method is better than many others. Still I have to admit that personally this self-motivation stuff has never appealed much to me. I'm using the just do it - or procrastinate method.
My experience of david allen's GTD is that it's a little bit like dieting. Every now and then I go on a diet because I'm depressed about my weight.
Every now and then I start using GTD because I'm feeling overwhelmed by the work that needs to be done.
Both make me feel better for a little while but I lack the willpower to stick at them.
> I go on a diet because I'm depressed
[...]
> I start using GTD because I'm feeling overwhelmed
[...]
> I lack the willpower to stick at them
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it's not willpower you lack. You stop feeling depressed, or you stop feeling overwhelmed (at least a little bit). That's why you stop.
One of the things I learned when I was studying Japanese is that I couldn't sustain my negative motivation to study. I could only study every day if I truly wanted to study every day.
It is said that if you keep one eye on the goal, you only have one eye for the path. For long term goals, it's important to concentrate on making your daily activities the goal, because the long term goal will not actually come in time to satisfy you.
Another way I tend to look at it is that people think "I want to be slim" or "I want to get things done". It's not actually what they want. Rather they are thinking, "I want to have become slim" or "I want to have got things done". The key to success is to change your point of view so that the act of becoming slim (dieting, exercising, etc) or the act of getting things done (working) is what you desire. Instead of thinking, "Those are crappy things that I must endure", you must think "Why do I dislike those things and what can I do to change my point of view?"
> You stop feeling depressed, or you stop feeling overwhelmed (at least a little bit). That's why you stop.
Could be. Another problem would be doubt: Is there any value in what I do? With some goals like loosing weight it is obvious. But how about: should I write that book?
The method is very efficient no matter what you do. That is, you approach your goal with 100 miles/hour and not walking speed. If at some point it becomes clear that you followed the wrong goal you wasted a good amount of energy. I think knowing this can paralyze you.
I think that "Is there any value in what I do" a good question, but perhaps you can think about it differently. For example, "Should I write a book?" If you start to write a book and don't finish, have you wasted your time? If your answer to this question is "yes", then maybe writing a book is not a good idea for you. Again, it's getting into that category of wanting to have written a book, not wanting to write a book.
Instead you can decide to write. It might be a book. It might not be a book. In fact, if you have never written a book before, probably it's much better not to aim at writing a book. For example, even if you want to run a marathon some day, you don't get up out of bed, never having run before and say, "Today I am going to run a marathon". Instead you get up and run. You do that every day for a year or so and then you start thinking, "Maybe I'll run a marathon".
I think people get confused because they see people just write a book, or run a marathon or whatever. If you are Stephen King, you can wake up one day and think "I'm going to write a book" because you already have all the skills you need to organise and maintain yourself over the period of time you need. You also know that writing is something you feel comfortable doing day in and day out. And although I can do many things that Stephen King can't do, I can not just decide to write a book. It takes experience to get to that point.
Another trick that I use for this kind of thing is to think about what I currently do that feels like a waste of time. For example, sitting around and watching mindless TV. It's easier to think, "I'm not going to watch TV today". But the question is, what are you going to do? Suddenly the world opens up. You can do anything. Maybe it is running. Maybe it is writing a book. Maybe it is programming. You aren't wasting your time, but you also don't need some paralysing overarching goal either.
All very true but what I meant to say (but didn't actually articulate) is that when you apply GTD it becomes clear that you need priorities.
Let's say you are well versed in a new technology that is quickly gaining popularity. Now you are unsure whether you want to write a book about this technology. Maybe it becomes THE standard book on this topic! Otoh, you could apply at a company where you can work on a project that uses said technology.
There are obviously pros and cons to both ideas. One Scenario: You start writing the book because it seems to be the more fulfilling job. Some months in a stronger, competing technology arrives. Now you think: Was starting the book a good idea? If I had taken the job at least I'd have earned a paycheck and had something to put on my CV. In hindsight you may realize that you crave a more secure lifestyle etc.
The time has passed so there already would be a gap on your CV if you don't finish the book. So maybe finishing the book is not a bad idea. At least you can demonstrate that you've done something successfully during the last couple of months. Let's assume finishing the book would take two more months. Could you easily complete it when everything is already outlined with GTD? Further more, could you easily abandon it when everything is already outlined with GTD?
I see. I have to admit that I'm especially bad at these kinds of decisions :-) I don't use GTD, so abandoning my plan is easy for me. I also don't try to optimise, generally speaking.
The one thing I can say from my experience with software projects is that plans must change in order to have success. It is rare that you will nail the correct course of action up front. In fact it is rare that the thing the customer needs looks anything like what they think they want at the start. This seems to be true for me in my life as well.
A friend once told me that you should tell the universe what you want and then wait for it to be delivered. The trick is that the universe never gives you what you asked for, but rather what you need. Your job is to recognise it when it comes. Easier said than done!
But anyway, thank your for the ideas. I will have to think about this!
> The key to success is to change your point of view so that the act of becoming slim (dieting, exercising, etc) or the act of getting things done (working) is what you desire.
Do you have more advice related to this?
For example, there are literally hundreds of little hobbies and projects I'd like to work on or get better at. For 20 years now (sigh) I've wanted to learn how to play guitar. I've taken lessons from different teachers, I've bought music for pieces I want to play, I've joined online communities, and even bought a second guitar to keep at work thinking it would be a nice thing to have for those times when I'm stuck on a problem. Other than the toy songs in a Hal Leonard book and a few scales, I can't play a single thing. All it takes is regular, deliberate practice, right?
One thing that is familiar to me is your first sentence "there are literally hundreds of little hobbies and projects". I have something I call the "rule of 3". It says that you can do 3 things in your life well. I pick one of those things to be my job. I pick another to be interacting with my family and friends. That leaves exactly 1 other thing.
You can do hundreds of things very poorly. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I dabble at cooking. I love it. It's fun. I used to live in Ottawa, Canada which conveniently has a branch of the Cordon Blue cooking school. I considered coughing up the $60K per year tuition (cough, cough) to learn to be a chef. But cooking is not my one thing. I love it, but I'm actually fine with being relatively crappy at it.
If you want to be a good guitar player, you have to decide to be a guitar player first. A guitar player plays his/her guitar every chance they can get. A guitar player enjoys playing his/her guitar. Once you learn to be a guitar player, you may decide to become a good guitar player. You may not. You certainly can't do it the other way around.
If you do not want to be a guitar player (as evidenced by the fact that you do not want to play your guitar and you avoid playing it even when you have the chance), there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Personally, I would also like to have become a good guitar player, but I have absolutely no interest in being a guitar player. So I restrict my guitar playing fantasies to my dreams and video games. This gives me the time to do what I actually want to do.
One other thing I should point out. There is nothing saying that you can't change your mind about the 3 things you want to do well. Of course, if you change your mind every day then nothing good will come out of it ;-) But if you get to a point where you are thinking, "You know what? I'm happy with what I've done and I don't want to continue", that's completely OK. It just gives you time to do something else.
Of course I don't have hundreds of hobbies but I do have very broad interests.
I was really interested in your views on pivoting from wanting to be accomplished at something to wanting to do the work to become accomplished. Limiting myself to one or two things can bring focus, but I don't think that necessarily translates into the needed pivot.
BTW, my goal was much more modest than becoming a good guitar player. I'd be happy to know a single "real" song.
Possibly it's difficult for me to express it. Hmmm... Maybe this will be a better approach. Even your modest goal is not modest if you can not accomplish it. You may be thinking that you should be able to get yourself to know a "real" song. You may be thinking that you have failed if you don't accomplish that goal. Personally, I really don't think so. It is too early to have such a goal because you are not playing your guitar.
Walking the entire length of the Champs Elysees is not a difficult task, but it is impossible if I am not in Paris. It is not an unreasonable goal for a Parisian, but it is completely unattainable if I refuse to go to Paris.
What I'm trying to tell you is that it's OK not to have that goal. If you keep focusing on it, no matter how small or insignificant you think it might be, you avoid the more important question. Why are you not playing your guitar?
Similarly, discussing my inability to walk the entire length of the Champs Elysees is useless until I work out why I can't go to Paris. Maybe I can go to Paris, but I don't want to. If that's the case, then it is fine to give up my dream without feeling bad about it. It's a choice. I have other things I want to do.
It would be a bit strange to ask, "How can I force myself to want to go to Paris? It's the only thing holding me back from walking the entire length of the Champs Elysees".
On the other hand, there may be many, many reasons why I can't go to Paris even though I want to. Maybe I need money. Maybe I need time. Maybe I'm just afraid that I'll fail. But without exploring those issues I will never know.
Why aren't you playing your guitar? In fact, why don't you stop reading this post right now and play your guitar? Playing a guitar does not take willpower, unless you would rather not play the guitar.
So my point is: If you don't want to play the guitar, your goal is impossible (and really meaningless). If you do want to play the guitar, then something is getting in your way of having fun. In this scenario, your goal is taking your attention away from finding out what that is and fixing it. So forget the goal and play your guitar. Start setting goals after you figure out the other stuff.
Again, I hope that helps. It's tricky stuff ;-)
Edit: Just to be consistent with my initial post -- there are things like dieting that may seem to be unpleasant but still required. So, exploring why you don't like something can help you find aspects that you do like. Then you can do those things. With dieting, for example, I have found that being a little bit hungry keeps my mind clear and makes me a better programmer. With practice, I can really enjoy that feeling. So being hungry begins to be something that I enjoy and want to do. However, I don't see the point of going to that extent for playing the guitar. Normal people don't require guitar playing in their lives.
> Even your modest goal is not modest if you can not accomplish it.
That's kinda profound. Thanks.
I happen to be reading Anders Ericsson's book Peak right now and he talks a lot about this kind of stuff. I'm only 1/3 in and so far he's explaining our brain's amazing plasticity and capacity for change through learning.
Loved the section "Try to get something done every day". Productivity hacks do nothing to me. Reading Hacker News while working is nothing off my actual work as long as I get things done. And I do get things done, lots of work. Not saying that productivity hacks won't work for someone, but people need to understand that best metric of getting stuff done is getting stuff done, regardless what you did in-between of start point and finish line.
Especially the "Focus" part. God knows how many times I missed deadlines because I was too stupid to focus on finishing one-two things at a time, instead of trying to work everything I have to, only to get confused, not sure what was next for one thing, something else for another... Finally sitting down and telling myself: "DUDE, FOCUS" As I realized how much easier it was to do things one at a time was a real life-saver.
This bit is key. Even a millimeter forward beats standing still. It's about discipline.
What works for me is simply:
1. Wake up early
2. Focus one one thing
3. Give yourself a deadline
4. Measure your productivity
------ shameless but useful plug begins here ------
I've turned this approach into a web app - https://lanes.io. It's a todo list and timer with 'insights' into when you're most productive. It won't help you with point 1 (try coffee), but it's good for achieving all the the other steps.
The feedback loop from measuring your progress is surprisingly effective. Trying to beat how productive you were yesterday becomes a game you play.
The first half of the article is a rephrasing of the organizational strategy of focusing hard on things closer to you (in time, priority, physically, financial, whatever) and intentionally fuzzier on things far away but remember to at least glance at everything once in a while. Its that strategy dis-integrated into seemingly unrelated parts without referencing the whole, although I was able to identify the whole. I'm too lazy to look up the dude who originally wrote that, probably wrote it more eloquently than I did; none of this paragraph is my idea.
The second half of the article isn't integrated or I can't recognize what was dis-integrated to make it. The problem of doing whatever's necessary paragraph isn't a purity problem or personal problem or usually everything turns out OK, but is often a code smell problem, which can be counteracted at least partially by the be organized enough paragraph, just comment the code as smelly and list it as needing rewriting in the TODO and hope it runs until it can be perfected. Likewise having deadlines and I can do a lot are dis-integrated. There probably is a theme to the second part that was dis-integrated that I can't identify.
I guess both complaints boil down to it needs a wrapper. An intro like "heres how to break down and concretely apply two wide ranging theoretical and vague organizational strategies (names here) that help me (insert the rest of the intro explaining why its important to do so here)" And a summary/conclusion of the highlights and if you liked this here are some google terms/references etc. Its "why" and "how" are well written and correct, its just missing its "what".
Its the meaty middle of a good essay, although an intro and conclusion (and references) would have been nice additions.
I did a lot of programming before the internet was widely available. It was easier to keep working but much harder to get things done.
When you have to use dusty manuals to research anything and everything you spend a lot of time looking things up and/or a lot of time trying random possibilities until one works.
(You end up with a lot of "black-box" APIs and functions that you know work, but you can't remember why or what other things it can do are)
"Try to get something done every day" has been the hardest and most rewarding part for me. It seems like it is mostly just reconciling long term and short term incentives. I'm incentivized tin the long run to finish and launch my side project but there are a ton of other short term incentives competing for my time today.
I put together https://codeorelse.com to help me with that. If I don't push to GiHub on a day, I have to pay $1 (or more if i want). Seems to be helping.
IMO, more than motivation, more than all the tip/tricks/productivity hacks, the one thing that keeps a person going for long periods of time is sheer discipline. When you make something a part of your daily routine, irrespective of the external/internal stimuli, you just keep at it. Not because there's some mega reward at the end of it, not because you're passionate about it, but just because you are "used to it" ! I think this was brilliantly explained by Scott Adams in his Goals vs Systems article. Instead of looking for motivation/passion and stuff, try to build a system / discipline around what you want to learn / want to be. Rest everything follows automatically. Even if it doesn't give immediate results, a system just doesn't stop, it keeps going !
Deliberate practice in discipline. Working backwards from a vision helps as well, no matter how unrealistic the 'end goal' is. That whole cliche about landing amongst the stars if you shoot for the moon or something.
Yes, I've started to apply this to a lot of things. Moreso than discipline though, it's habit.
Think about whatever you want to do like brushing your teeth. There's no end-goal in mind. You're never done brushing your teeth. You just do it, at more or less the same time every day because it's part of your routine. If something happens and you don't do it for a day, you don't throw up your hands and say "Oh no! My tooth-brushing progress ruined! I better give up!", you just pick up where you left off the next day.
I generally agree with your sentiment to an extent but let me also play devil's advocate:
Whittling your entire life down to process makes you almost robotic and strips you of creativity, spontaneity, and just....that je ne sais quoi of life. It's just too boring.
As always, it's a balance and depends on context. Gymtime? Make it a process. Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them.
I fundamentally disagree that process prevents creativity in any way. On the contrary, I think creativity requires process. The idea that creativity is just something that "comes" to you is an extremely harmful myth.
I fundamentally disagree that creativity requires process. Creativity requires inspiration and the most common analogy that I think people use to drive this point home is children at play.
I agree with you in that inspiration is not something that just happens. It comes from a variety of avenues...from you doing many different things, from you going outside your comfort zone, hearing a new idea, going deeper into a subject etc. And it's probably your own responsibility to put yourself in a position where inspiration can strike (e.g. doing things!).
What I meant to express is that chopping up your week into a pre-defined routine that you do every week for years under the guise of discipline is the wrong way to approach it.
I think we're mis-communicating because neither of us defined what "process" means to us. Perhaps we really agree with each other.
You probably are in agreement. The point of putting in any time is that you have to develop an appreciation and sometimes new skills or techniques for whatever it is you're doing, before you can act on it in more than a cursory surface way. Hot takes based on textbook knowledge are easy and everyone can do those.
Recognizing that, then the problem is just one of how and when you put in that time to go in deep on ideas, when nobody is asking you to. For a lot of folks including myself, routine helps: "I will spend two hours each day on the hard thing I don't know how to solve and have no actionables on," and usually within those two hours something happens to develop your thought process.
For younger folks, deliberate engagement in "designed creativity" is something that isn't just not taught, but actively discouraged by the lack of external feedback, role models or conversations. So it's much harder than just picking up a skill by copying and subsequently making some surface changes to the copy.
It's funny because my friends who are musicians or work with art and such all have a process to get creative. That don't sit around waiting for it, they strive towards it. I've heard and read the same from both books and online that most creative people have a process which they use to become inspired.
Which is not to say that you can't just suddenly have a moment of sudden inspiration, just that they are far more rare than the creativity you work for.
You have a problem to solve. You first spend time understanding the problem. This process continues until you understand the problem.
You then start to turn potential solutions over in your head. Lots of research and thought required - this includes inspiration. You must feed your brain. You continue this process indefinitely until...
Epiphany. A special kind of inspiration. You come across something unrelated and your mind connects it to the problem. Ideas in the shower are a typical example. The epiphany gives you a rush - out of nowhere you have the solution.
Creativity is a process where inspiration is a key part. They don't have to be exclusive.
There is always a problem to solve and there is always process, we simply don't tend to notice it because we take it as a given (i.e., evolution/survival).
I don't think a kid would be intentionally optimizing anything in this situation. So if you mean that creativity is not only a tool to be used conciously, I agree.
I just mean I think it's difficult to argue that anything we humans do can be viewed as anything else but problem solving.
So in the case of the kid there might be millions of direct reasons (e.g., boredom > want to solve that), but I think it would still be possible to map any of them to some form of problem > effect or cause > effect relationship. Nothing happens without a reason (without religious connotation).
Actually, the reverse is true. Cognitive load actually reduces creativity, so by having systems in place to reduce cognitive load you free brainpower to be creative.
That being said, I agree that planning too far in advance is a bad idea, mostly because like the weather, there is an element of chaos in people's lives that makes the best possible action at any given moment hard to predict farther than a few days out.
I agree with this, with one caveat: I think 'discipline' is a misleading word for what you're describing. That's what's so counter-intuitive -- once you build the habits of excellence, then executing on those habits is actually trivial, and requires almost no effort. Talking about 'discipline' makes it sound like you're bearing down and getting on with the heroic business of self-denial, when the real trick is to burn in these beneficial behaviors to the point where it would be nearly as hard to not do them as to do them. I guess that's a kind of discipline (maybe discipline-in-outcome), but the usual idiomatic sense seems to be more discipline-in-exhibited effort. Two very different things.
'Habit' is definitely a better word. The Power of Habit is actually a great book that pretty much articulates its title.
Willpower/discipline is better used to build individual habits. "Good habits" will build on each other and give you huge returns in productivity, time management, and psychological well-being.
You paint a pretty picture of life once you have attained "habits of excellence".
I've been going to the gym 4+ times a week for the last 5 years. And yes it has gotten easier, and 80% of the time really I enjoy it. But there are days where I am tired, or just don't feel like it.
Those days are where discipline is the most important. The ability to do that which you must, wether you want to or not.
tldr: I think real success is a balance of both, good habits and the discipline to stay the course.
One thing the post doesn't cover is a defeatist attitude or a poor outlook on life.
Basically, depression (regardless of the reason).
Depression doesn't need to paralyze you. You can be productive when depressed but it is often followed by a pattern of self destructive behavior.
I used to never understand why addicts would self destroy. They would get a job, finally get their lives together and then fuck it up.
Long term goals can feel pointless when you believe that you are insignificant and your life is meaningless. What's the point of improving my life by X factor if I'm gonna be dead anyway? What's the point of building this if it will be replaced by technology Y in Z years? What's the point of discovering this if eventually someone else will? What's the point if the Universe....
That type of thinking about the far future often results in defeatism.
In reality, you wake up the next day, having made no progress, your life is the same as yesterday, it may have gotten worse if you overindulged in your addiction and now you feel like utter shit.
A positive outlook on life and a focus on improving now, on evaluating each activity as a return on investment and building a better version of yourself feels more serene than admitting defeat.
I think comfort leads to stagnation. The best work I've done is when I was in survival mode and completely dissatisfied with my life. Once I reach "normalcy", procrastination and self indulgence kick in unless I see a point behind a long term goal.
>Once I reach "normalcy", procrastination and self indulgence kick in unless I see a point behind a long term goal.
Greeeeat point. Productivity is incredible while you're in survival mode. However, is there a time when stagnation is the goal? I often thought, "If I got rich, I'd do nothing. Sit, enjoy life, travel." But would that lead to the depression you speak of?
I think it says something about the Hacker News community that these posts always float to the top. Hardly a day passes where I don't see a "no more procrastination" post.
What does this mean? Is it that we're all procrastinators? I don't think so, many here are highly accomplished. Is it our fear or procrastination? Is it perfectionism?
Here's the big one for me.
Define short deadlines!
This is super important, it will force you to do the other ones automatically (Removing less important tasks, focusing, etc)
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadThis is not necessarily a very positive sounding message, but when you are pulled left and right to support or help people, you do not get anything on your personal task list done.
There is a right balance to find because in a way by helping, the whole team is progressing. Try to teach people how to fish rather that giving them a fish.
On that note, postpone noncritical shit as long as you can stomach. 9 times out of 10 it will resolve itself and you'll find you didn't really care about the result.
If you silently chip the task into the tall grass, then they are left with ambiguity and frustration. If you are explicit, then you give them an opportunity to convince you of its value. If you respect them as a colleague, listen to them and argue with them. If you don't respect them, talk to your manager so they stop coming to you.
At work, the correct response is to consult a project manager person and ask: "Which project would you like me to deprioritize, in favor of this new project?". There are people whose entire job it is to balance stakeholder concerns and decide what you should be working on today/this week/this month/this quarter. Use them.
If you're in a position or organization where that's your job, then make your priorities public. When someone asks you to do X, explain that you're already doing Y. If you can't come to an ad-hoc agreement about priorities, talk to a higher up.
If you're the last higher up in the chain, then, shit man, hire more people.
But the basic principle is this: If it's not on the roadmap, why are you working on it? If it's not the next most important thing on the roadmap, why are you working on it?
There is value in squashing unambiguous bugs that get reported even if they don't fit into whe broader theme of what you are working on.
There has to be some slack for creativity, problem-solving, and some unstructured collaboration. I run into problems all the time in a "cross-functional" role with people who refuse to lift their nose from the grindstone unless specifically commanded by their boss.
Same approach for bugs. If something comes up where it's not absolutely clear that it's a critical production bug, I go ask the roadmap guy whether this is more or less critical than what I'm working on.
The idea isn't that he's my boss and I only do ahat he says, but that he has broader insight into the business and criticality of various things. Sometimes something can be terribe and critical and everyone gets up in a huff, but it's still not worth doing instead of the business critical project you're working on.
Reminds of
> If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly
http://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/
I think it is important to focus on an achievable list of tasks each day, otherwise you can easily get overwhelmed. Getting items closed each day makes me feel effective.
My personal "hack" is to focus on no more than 5 tasks per day (apart from all of my regular everyday work tasks), and I am building an MVP to track those: https://five.today/
I honestly get a great feeling from a completed list at the end of each day (but I don't always get there!).
And the code isn't actually bad. The real problem is that it also makes you into a perfectionist who starts to write his own jpeg library if he finds anything about libjpg that he does't like.
Worse, I remember that I disliked the task through its entirety and I'm very acutely aware of that and start associating starting it with a bad experience.
Fast forward few more days or weeks, you're unexcited, you think this is hopelessly daft, you think no will care about it, and slowly de-motivation creeps in.
I recently started a small blog to write research based articles on interesting questions with a goal of putting a few posts per month but it seems I am far behind my aim. I was excited about writing my last post[1] but gradually, it faded into self-doubt — the writing style is in-consistent and poor, the points are not strong, research is shallow — most of which come when I see how others write and inevitably start comparing them with mine. I did end up finishing the post but I just don't value what I did.
It seems the timeframe between starting and finishing should be as short as possible. The breaks just kill the spirit.
[1]: https://newpopsicle.com/should-the-truth-be-sugar-coated/
The result is a (possibly ten-year long) period where you can clearly recognize that your work sucks but you don't have the ability (yet) to not suck.
Actually that saying goes back at least to old FORTRAN programmers from the 60s vs C programmers in the 70s and their ability to write recognizable FORTRAN in C (whaddya mean that in C a variable named i isn't implicitly defined as an int by its very name? and so on).
Thats the pessimistic view. The optimistic view is writing A in B gives you a chance to learn B by replacing small parts of emulated A with bare metal B. Good luck when you scale up and the major architecture of the problem is different when written in A vs B, that won't be as simple as swapping out things.
Here's the full quote: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
It's funny how strongly I heard Glass' voice in my head as I read that. He seems like an interesting guy.
Maybe the idea was not so good after all. That is not a bad thing. Keep on rocking.
This guy puts it nicely I think: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8 ( explicit ) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHb3vC9OmE ( PG rated )
"Most ideas kinda of suck when you do them."
That is perfectly fine, move on to the next.
For example, instead of writing one long post per month, you write one small one each week.
The long monthly post is more difficult to pull off because the payoff is so far off, and requires so much more. It isn't the writing that is difficult, but persisting in writing.
If you divide work in smaller, more frequent units you can get more stuff done over time. Also, you can go back and combine these small units as building blogs for something bigger.
I actually believe that this iterative approach is how everything is created.
> The long monthly post is more difficult to pull off because the payoff is so far off, and requires so much more. It isn't the writing that is difficult, but persisting in writing.
That's interesting, because in this case, I would actually recommend the opposite: instead of trying to put out an article a week, write an article a month. He said:
> the writing style is in-consistent and poor, the points are not strong, research is shallow — most of which come when I see how others write and inevitably start comparing them with mine. I did end up finishing the post but I just don't value what I did.
Quality research and writing takes time. With experience comes skill, and that can reduce the time it takes, but if you're not there yet, going faster won't make the product better. And if you're discouraged because of lack of quality, putting out equal or worse quality won't help motivation.
Instead, slow down. Pick a topic you're really interested in, that you think will help others in a significant way, and spend a whole month on it. Work on it for 30-60 minutes a day; if you average 45 minutes a day for a month, that's around 20 hours. You can research and write something worth reading in 20 hours, and you can give yourself enough time to do it well, with proofreading and even gathering feedback.
In other words, take the time to do work you can be proud of. If your only deadline is self-imposed, why rush? There is a never-ending supply of fluff on the Internet, and adding your own fluff won't make any difference in the end. As an amateur writer--one who does it for the love of writing--take the time to do it right; it's a luxury many writers would envy.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that any piece taking on a rich, challenging topic needs to be a few thousand words at least. Anything less means that important rebuttals go unaddressed and evidence gets cherry-picked. If you can fit your prescription for Syria into a 500 word column, you can't possibly have included enough information to lead your readers to an informed conclusion. At best you've offered an idea without claiming to prove it, at worst you've tossed off a handful of facts and pretended to rigor.
If you want good small, frequent posts, you'd better keep your scope similarly small. Tell me about a campaign speech and its significance, but don't diagnose the entire election. Or pick a settled technical topic and just be didactic, but be prepared to research every sentence.
It's fun to write bold, strident essays on a topic, but it doesn't do very much. The value-added part is the fact-finding and fact-checking slog, and I think a lot of people (myself included) underestimate just how much more time goes into researching a good essay than actually writing it. Just as you said, a good work on a big topic takes tens of hours, even to address one aspect.
For me, this means that I abandon a lot of work - I care enough to write about it (fun), but not enough to firmly ground that writing (exhausting). So I try to either escape the problem with speculative writing, or judge my interest early on and decide whether to follow through before wasting time.
So when I hear someone say that the analysis in their writing is weak, and their research is shallow, I'm hopeful! It means that they're writing with enough self-awareness to actually seek the truth.
When you get here, start talking to other people about it. Run it by your pals, your internet friends, whoever, see if they think it's good. If they like it and give you positive feedback (hey I'd use that library! I'd play that game) then it's both encouragement and a sign that you'll have at least something of a receptive audience for it when you're done.
Well, that works for me at least.
Even if all your writing does is clarify things in your head, that's progress. You are better because of it. Don't bother iterating and polishing the writing if you don't feel like it. Move to another post or write on the same subject again with a clear head.
Also, do not underestimate the quality of your work. It is often good enough for people who are not at your level.
There is so much work out there I now think is mediocre but used to believe was amazing/awesome/life-changing.
Making personal progress is more important than doing nothing and stagnating.
Good luck with your work ;-)
http://www.tipsterkini.com/2016/04/cara-menghilangkan-bau-mu...
With a team, working on a project, you have some nice extrinsic motivation. A team relying on you, maybe deadlines to meet, customers to please, a paycheck to work for, etc.
But for side projects, even though I knew all the tricks, I still had a really tough time actually doing anything for a couple of years. I had a couple of projects that I was super motivated for and completed over a couple of weeks, but most of my time outside of that was wholly unproductive.
The thing that was missing for me was the why, the long-term vision. If I was working on something now that has little value to me in that moment or the days following, I found it hard to find motivation to keep going.
What I found boost my initial productivity the most was actually conjuring up the motivation. After that, it's a series of small wins in increasing that productivity through software, tips, tricks, support groups, etc. Without the motivation, though, no amount of tools will get things done for you.
Motivation is ephemeral. Hard work, habit, consistently applying yourself regardless of your motivation, is key.
Tell a depressed, unmotivated person with no goals to just "work hard" and see how far that gets you. There needs to be some reason to do something rather than nothing.
Pressfield's "do the work" annoys me, because it undervalues the importance of energy and a goal. It's a great approach to make reliable progress and fight distraction, but it's badly inadequate to the task of creating activity in the first place.
It's a very fundamental condition. You can't do away with it. Being low on energy doesn't mean you're not motivated.
Hard work, habits, etc., are extremely relative things from what I've seen, and it's still not well understood what they mean and how they work.
Can we please stop worshiping someone's conviction from a book?
[1]http://tinyhabits.com/
I agree that "grinding it out" doesn't apply to creative work. You can have a time block dedicated to writing and produce nothing because you feel the activity is pointless/meaningless.
If you don't see how the end result will make your life better, you will never make progress. Worse, you will get depressed by the meaninglessness of it all and be tempted to self sabotage existing efforts.
Long term goals are an existential crisis because every fiber in your body just wants to say "Fuck it", give up and indulge into immediate unfullfilling gratification.
Intentional self destructive behavior is pretty much any activity that says "Fuck you future self". Often, it requires reflection on your attitude and outlook on the future.
Allen's method is better than many others. Still I have to admit that personally this self-motivation stuff has never appealed much to me. I'm using the just do it - or procrastinate method.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it's not willpower you lack. You stop feeling depressed, or you stop feeling overwhelmed (at least a little bit). That's why you stop.
One of the things I learned when I was studying Japanese is that I couldn't sustain my negative motivation to study. I could only study every day if I truly wanted to study every day.
It is said that if you keep one eye on the goal, you only have one eye for the path. For long term goals, it's important to concentrate on making your daily activities the goal, because the long term goal will not actually come in time to satisfy you.
Another way I tend to look at it is that people think "I want to be slim" or "I want to get things done". It's not actually what they want. Rather they are thinking, "I want to have become slim" or "I want to have got things done". The key to success is to change your point of view so that the act of becoming slim (dieting, exercising, etc) or the act of getting things done (working) is what you desire. Instead of thinking, "Those are crappy things that I must endure", you must think "Why do I dislike those things and what can I do to change my point of view?"
Hope that helps!
Could be. Another problem would be doubt: Is there any value in what I do? With some goals like loosing weight it is obvious. But how about: should I write that book?
The method is very efficient no matter what you do. That is, you approach your goal with 100 miles/hour and not walking speed. If at some point it becomes clear that you followed the wrong goal you wasted a good amount of energy. I think knowing this can paralyze you.
Instead you can decide to write. It might be a book. It might not be a book. In fact, if you have never written a book before, probably it's much better not to aim at writing a book. For example, even if you want to run a marathon some day, you don't get up out of bed, never having run before and say, "Today I am going to run a marathon". Instead you get up and run. You do that every day for a year or so and then you start thinking, "Maybe I'll run a marathon".
I think people get confused because they see people just write a book, or run a marathon or whatever. If you are Stephen King, you can wake up one day and think "I'm going to write a book" because you already have all the skills you need to organise and maintain yourself over the period of time you need. You also know that writing is something you feel comfortable doing day in and day out. And although I can do many things that Stephen King can't do, I can not just decide to write a book. It takes experience to get to that point.
Another trick that I use for this kind of thing is to think about what I currently do that feels like a waste of time. For example, sitting around and watching mindless TV. It's easier to think, "I'm not going to watch TV today". But the question is, what are you going to do? Suddenly the world opens up. You can do anything. Maybe it is running. Maybe it is writing a book. Maybe it is programming. You aren't wasting your time, but you also don't need some paralysing overarching goal either.
Let's say you are well versed in a new technology that is quickly gaining popularity. Now you are unsure whether you want to write a book about this technology. Maybe it becomes THE standard book on this topic! Otoh, you could apply at a company where you can work on a project that uses said technology.
There are obviously pros and cons to both ideas. One Scenario: You start writing the book because it seems to be the more fulfilling job. Some months in a stronger, competing technology arrives. Now you think: Was starting the book a good idea? If I had taken the job at least I'd have earned a paycheck and had something to put on my CV. In hindsight you may realize that you crave a more secure lifestyle etc.
The time has passed so there already would be a gap on your CV if you don't finish the book. So maybe finishing the book is not a bad idea. At least you can demonstrate that you've done something successfully during the last couple of months. Let's assume finishing the book would take two more months. Could you easily complete it when everything is already outlined with GTD? Further more, could you easily abandon it when everything is already outlined with GTD?
The one thing I can say from my experience with software projects is that plans must change in order to have success. It is rare that you will nail the correct course of action up front. In fact it is rare that the thing the customer needs looks anything like what they think they want at the start. This seems to be true for me in my life as well.
A friend once told me that you should tell the universe what you want and then wait for it to be delivered. The trick is that the universe never gives you what you asked for, but rather what you need. Your job is to recognise it when it comes. Easier said than done!
But anyway, thank your for the ideas. I will have to think about this!
Do you have more advice related to this?
For example, there are literally hundreds of little hobbies and projects I'd like to work on or get better at. For 20 years now (sigh) I've wanted to learn how to play guitar. I've taken lessons from different teachers, I've bought music for pieces I want to play, I've joined online communities, and even bought a second guitar to keep at work thinking it would be a nice thing to have for those times when I'm stuck on a problem. Other than the toy songs in a Hal Leonard book and a few scales, I can't play a single thing. All it takes is regular, deliberate practice, right?
You can do hundreds of things very poorly. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I dabble at cooking. I love it. It's fun. I used to live in Ottawa, Canada which conveniently has a branch of the Cordon Blue cooking school. I considered coughing up the $60K per year tuition (cough, cough) to learn to be a chef. But cooking is not my one thing. I love it, but I'm actually fine with being relatively crappy at it.
If you want to be a good guitar player, you have to decide to be a guitar player first. A guitar player plays his/her guitar every chance they can get. A guitar player enjoys playing his/her guitar. Once you learn to be a guitar player, you may decide to become a good guitar player. You may not. You certainly can't do it the other way around.
If you do not want to be a guitar player (as evidenced by the fact that you do not want to play your guitar and you avoid playing it even when you have the chance), there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Personally, I would also like to have become a good guitar player, but I have absolutely no interest in being a guitar player. So I restrict my guitar playing fantasies to my dreams and video games. This gives me the time to do what I actually want to do.
One other thing I should point out. There is nothing saying that you can't change your mind about the 3 things you want to do well. Of course, if you change your mind every day then nothing good will come out of it ;-) But if you get to a point where you are thinking, "You know what? I'm happy with what I've done and I don't want to continue", that's completely OK. It just gives you time to do something else.
I was really interested in your views on pivoting from wanting to be accomplished at something to wanting to do the work to become accomplished. Limiting myself to one or two things can bring focus, but I don't think that necessarily translates into the needed pivot.
BTW, my goal was much more modest than becoming a good guitar player. I'd be happy to know a single "real" song.
Walking the entire length of the Champs Elysees is not a difficult task, but it is impossible if I am not in Paris. It is not an unreasonable goal for a Parisian, but it is completely unattainable if I refuse to go to Paris.
What I'm trying to tell you is that it's OK not to have that goal. If you keep focusing on it, no matter how small or insignificant you think it might be, you avoid the more important question. Why are you not playing your guitar?
Similarly, discussing my inability to walk the entire length of the Champs Elysees is useless until I work out why I can't go to Paris. Maybe I can go to Paris, but I don't want to. If that's the case, then it is fine to give up my dream without feeling bad about it. It's a choice. I have other things I want to do.
It would be a bit strange to ask, "How can I force myself to want to go to Paris? It's the only thing holding me back from walking the entire length of the Champs Elysees".
On the other hand, there may be many, many reasons why I can't go to Paris even though I want to. Maybe I need money. Maybe I need time. Maybe I'm just afraid that I'll fail. But without exploring those issues I will never know.
Why aren't you playing your guitar? In fact, why don't you stop reading this post right now and play your guitar? Playing a guitar does not take willpower, unless you would rather not play the guitar.
So my point is: If you don't want to play the guitar, your goal is impossible (and really meaningless). If you do want to play the guitar, then something is getting in your way of having fun. In this scenario, your goal is taking your attention away from finding out what that is and fixing it. So forget the goal and play your guitar. Start setting goals after you figure out the other stuff.
Again, I hope that helps. It's tricky stuff ;-)
Edit: Just to be consistent with my initial post -- there are things like dieting that may seem to be unpleasant but still required. So, exploring why you don't like something can help you find aspects that you do like. Then you can do those things. With dieting, for example, I have found that being a little bit hungry keeps my mind clear and makes me a better programmer. With practice, I can really enjoy that feeling. So being hungry begins to be something that I enjoy and want to do. However, I don't see the point of going to that extent for playing the guitar. Normal people don't require guitar playing in their lives.
That's kinda profound. Thanks.
I happen to be reading Anders Ericsson's book Peak right now and he talks a lot about this kind of stuff. I'm only 1/3 in and so far he's explaining our brain's amazing plasticity and capacity for change through learning.
Especially the "Focus" part. God knows how many times I missed deadlines because I was too stupid to focus on finishing one-two things at a time, instead of trying to work everything I have to, only to get confused, not sure what was next for one thing, something else for another... Finally sitting down and telling myself: "DUDE, FOCUS" As I realized how much easier it was to do things one at a time was a real life-saver.
This bit is key. Even a millimeter forward beats standing still. It's about discipline.
What works for me is simply:
1. Wake up early 2. Focus one one thing 3. Give yourself a deadline 4. Measure your productivity
------ shameless but useful plug begins here ------
I've turned this approach into a web app - https://lanes.io. It's a todo list and timer with 'insights' into when you're most productive. It won't help you with point 1 (try coffee), but it's good for achieving all the the other steps.
The feedback loop from measuring your progress is surprisingly effective. Trying to beat how productive you were yesterday becomes a game you play.
The first half of the article is a rephrasing of the organizational strategy of focusing hard on things closer to you (in time, priority, physically, financial, whatever) and intentionally fuzzier on things far away but remember to at least glance at everything once in a while. Its that strategy dis-integrated into seemingly unrelated parts without referencing the whole, although I was able to identify the whole. I'm too lazy to look up the dude who originally wrote that, probably wrote it more eloquently than I did; none of this paragraph is my idea.
The second half of the article isn't integrated or I can't recognize what was dis-integrated to make it. The problem of doing whatever's necessary paragraph isn't a purity problem or personal problem or usually everything turns out OK, but is often a code smell problem, which can be counteracted at least partially by the be organized enough paragraph, just comment the code as smelly and list it as needing rewriting in the TODO and hope it runs until it can be perfected. Likewise having deadlines and I can do a lot are dis-integrated. There probably is a theme to the second part that was dis-integrated that I can't identify.
I guess both complaints boil down to it needs a wrapper. An intro like "heres how to break down and concretely apply two wide ranging theoretical and vague organizational strategies (names here) that help me (insert the rest of the intro explaining why its important to do so here)" And a summary/conclusion of the highlights and if you liked this here are some google terms/references etc. Its "why" and "how" are well written and correct, its just missing its "what".
Its the meaty middle of a good essay, although an intro and conclusion (and references) would have been nice additions.
When you have to use dusty manuals to research anything and everything you spend a lot of time looking things up and/or a lot of time trying random possibilities until one works.
(You end up with a lot of "black-box" APIs and functions that you know work, but you can't remember why or what other things it can do are)
I put together https://codeorelse.com to help me with that. If I don't push to GiHub on a day, I have to pay $1 (or more if i want). Seems to be helping.
Think about whatever you want to do like brushing your teeth. There's no end-goal in mind. You're never done brushing your teeth. You just do it, at more or less the same time every day because it's part of your routine. If something happens and you don't do it for a day, you don't throw up your hands and say "Oh no! My tooth-brushing progress ruined! I better give up!", you just pick up where you left off the next day.
Whittling your entire life down to process makes you almost robotic and strips you of creativity, spontaneity, and just....that je ne sais quoi of life. It's just too boring.
As always, it's a balance and depends on context. Gymtime? Make it a process. Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them.
Bad writers wait until they have an idea to start writing. Good writers know the ideas don't happen until after they've started writing.
What I meant to express is that chopping up your week into a pre-defined routine that you do every week for years under the guise of discipline is the wrong way to approach it.
I think we're mis-communicating because neither of us defined what "process" means to us. Perhaps we really agree with each other.
Recognizing that, then the problem is just one of how and when you put in that time to go in deep on ideas, when nobody is asking you to. For a lot of folks including myself, routine helps: "I will spend two hours each day on the hard thing I don't know how to solve and have no actionables on," and usually within those two hours something happens to develop your thought process.
For younger folks, deliberate engagement in "designed creativity" is something that isn't just not taught, but actively discouraged by the lack of external feedback, role models or conversations. So it's much harder than just picking up a skill by copying and subsequently making some surface changes to the copy.
Which is not to say that you can't just suddenly have a moment of sudden inspiration, just that they are far more rare than the creativity you work for.
You have a problem to solve. You first spend time understanding the problem. This process continues until you understand the problem.
You then start to turn potential solutions over in your head. Lots of research and thought required - this includes inspiration. You must feed your brain. You continue this process indefinitely until...
Epiphany. A special kind of inspiration. You come across something unrelated and your mind connects it to the problem. Ideas in the shower are a typical example. The epiphany gives you a rush - out of nowhere you have the solution.
Creativity is a process where inspiration is a key part. They don't have to be exclusive.
I just mean I think it's difficult to argue that anything we humans do can be viewed as anything else but problem solving.
So in the case of the kid there might be millions of direct reasons (e.g., boredom > want to solve that), but I think it would still be possible to map any of them to some form of problem > effect or cause > effect relationship. Nothing happens without a reason (without religious connotation).
That being said, I agree that planning too far in advance is a bad idea, mostly because like the weather, there is an element of chaos in people's lives that makes the best possible action at any given moment hard to predict farther than a few days out.
this is easy to do when you're younger but after 30 becomes difficult.
Willpower/discipline is better used to build individual habits. "Good habits" will build on each other and give you huge returns in productivity, time management, and psychological well-being.
I've been going to the gym 4+ times a week for the last 5 years. And yes it has gotten easier, and 80% of the time really I enjoy it. But there are days where I am tired, or just don't feel like it.
Those days are where discipline is the most important. The ability to do that which you must, wether you want to or not.
tldr: I think real success is a balance of both, good habits and the discipline to stay the course.
Depression doesn't need to paralyze you. You can be productive when depressed but it is often followed by a pattern of self destructive behavior.
I used to never understand why addicts would self destroy. They would get a job, finally get their lives together and then fuck it up.
Long term goals can feel pointless when you believe that you are insignificant and your life is meaningless. What's the point of improving my life by X factor if I'm gonna be dead anyway? What's the point of building this if it will be replaced by technology Y in Z years? What's the point of discovering this if eventually someone else will? What's the point if the Universe....
That type of thinking about the far future often results in defeatism.
In reality, you wake up the next day, having made no progress, your life is the same as yesterday, it may have gotten worse if you overindulged in your addiction and now you feel like utter shit.
A positive outlook on life and a focus on improving now, on evaluating each activity as a return on investment and building a better version of yourself feels more serene than admitting defeat.
I think comfort leads to stagnation. The best work I've done is when I was in survival mode and completely dissatisfied with my life. Once I reach "normalcy", procrastination and self indulgence kick in unless I see a point behind a long term goal.
Greeeeat point. Productivity is incredible while you're in survival mode. However, is there a time when stagnation is the goal? I often thought, "If I got rich, I'd do nothing. Sit, enjoy life, travel." But would that lead to the depression you speak of?
You're back to square 1 and you need to work to improve your life. The technology, products and services simply do not exist.
Unless you are willing to readjust your world view, attitude and ambition to be fine with stagnation (i.e "living life"); you will feel dissatisfied.
Save this file. Open it. Either add your own code at the bottom or use require to use it from another file.
https://github.com/sicp-lang/sicp/blob/master/sicp-pict2/sic...
I guess that's the tragedy of the human existence.
What does this mean? Is it that we're all procrastinators? I don't think so, many here are highly accomplished. Is it our fear or procrastination? Is it perfectionism?
Strange.
Given that it is a poorly understood subject, it is then a highly moralized one, and moralized topics are popular.