Ask HN: Time management strategies that made the greatest impact on productivity

I find that measuring has a huge impact. Download the Hours app for iOS and make timers for work, family, working out, food, etc.

RescueTime. It gives you a breakdown of every time sink, and does it using an efficiency metric. You can also set limits to specific websites; for example, I've set a time limit of 10 minutes per day for social networking websites. After 10 minutes, access to those sites are blocked for 24 hours.

No app / software / system, and this is very subjective, but I've found that for myself the following principles work well:

1. Every hour of sleep before midnight is 'worth' 2 hours in terms of good sleep. Going to bed at 11pm already provides huge improvements in morning mood and productivity. See -->3.

2. In the evening, write down the 3 most important things you wish to achieve on the next day.

3. Early mornings work hours (even in your pyjama) are vastly more productive than any other time of the day.

Dave Allen's Getting Things Done worked well for me. Although I don't see it as a time management strategy, more of a task management system.

I don't really use the location-context lists. What I found handy was the task workflow and getting to inbox-zero (no un-handled emails in the inbox).

When I first implemented it at work, I spent three days going through some 2k+ emails. I found about 6 or 7 emails in that lot that probably needed some action, or was sparking some idea that actually was quite valuable.

But the bulk of emails you can either delete (you'll never need it again) or store for retrieval. And the few that require an action, either do it immediately (if it's less than two minutes) or defer/delegate.

Another life-hack is to be ruthless and unsubscribe from as much as possible... almost none of it is necessary.

I tend to undervalue time management when it comes to productivity. The fundamental premise is that you can get more out of limited amount of time, which is true, but there's limit to how much extra productivity you can get that way. 30% saving? 50% saving? Eventually you're stuck.

In contrast, you can get order of magnitude productivity improvements by avoiding unnecessary work - a task that might take junior programmer weeks can often be done by an experienced programmer in a couple of days, and done better too. And it's not because of time management. More here - https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/ - and here - https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-pro...

If you get distracted frequently by email, turn off notifications (or even unread counts) for it and make a habit of checking it only on a fixed schedule - such as first thing in the morning, at lunchtime, and last thing before leaving.

I've been using the pomodoro method to fairly good effect. Basically set a timer for 2-355 minutes, and just work on something. Then take a 5-10 minute break and repeat. Every four sessions, take a longer break

I often get into a trap of thinking about the best thing I should be working on rather than actually working on anything. This helps with that. I usually reserve the first two sessions of the day for checking emails and getting organized for the day, then the rest of the day is executing on the plan

Also I document the main things I worked on each period and the time worked each period (in theory it's 25 minutes / session but often more like 35-1 hour+)

After a year of doing this i find ~65% of my time is spent working rather than breaks (including lunch and gym) and I work about 10 hours / day. Should mention I work from home