Ask HN: What's your #1 productivity hack?

Wow, a great hack and profound insight. How did no one think of this before now?

noprocrast: yes

For many people, sleep seems to be the #1 productivity booster. Certainly, the research seems to suggest focus suffers significantly thanks to lack of sleep - not to mention IQ.

Needless to say there seem to be exceptions - Margaret Thatcher famously coped with 4 hours a night. It's been suggested that some people's ADRB1 expression continues while they're awake, which means they need less sleep. However, less sleep is also associated with dementia late in life.

I think productivity enhancements are really tightly coupled with the domain and type of activity you are doing.

For example, as a university student, I noticed that timing the number of hours I pass on each topic is useful for 1. understanding if I'm doing too little and fixing it 2. getting the idea where I'm spending most of my time and trying to adjust accordingly

On the other hand, if the work is more project-based, I find it more difficult to track time since I find myself switching more often to different things - a solution I'm employing is writing a little todo list every morning on what I want to work on and it's working a little better

saying NO

On a meta level, I would say identifying the things that drain your battery throughout the day (e.g. messy room, slow phone) and the tings that recharge your battery (e.g. calling a friend, taking the bike to work) and acting accordingly.

Also, having a nice computer. It's a bicycle for my mind, after all.

Delete Facebook

Exercise at least once every other day. It does wonders for productivity and focus.

the i3 tiling window manager

As I already said here before...

Read through `man bash`. Thank me later :-)

But seriously, just take some time to read through manuals of software you _really_ use a lot. Like git, vim (or any of your fancypants code editor), shell, etc.

doing it consistently over a long period of time. It took me years to realize that all nighters and overwork were a big mistake.

What truly works is to show up everyday consistently for years.

Like Bill said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Hearing protectors. I use a 3M Peltor X5A -31dB and Flare Isolate Pro. Dead silence, minimal bone hearing.

Install tool like "RescueTime" or "ManicTime" so you can measure your productivity and computer usage every day.

Freedom app has been super useful for me so far

Kratom, vyvanse and coffee for breakfast! Makes me a relaxed, focused, alert and efficient force to be reckoned with. As it gets closer to lunch time, I’ll take a stack of l-theanine, gaba, black seed oil and ashwaghanda to take the edge off the peak and prepare me for that trip to Pluto I take on my couch after a couple bong rips at the end of the shift.

My killer productivity hack is a combination of three techniques: 1. Pomodoro, 2. GTD (Getting Things Done), and 3. Spaced Repetition Learning.

Pomodoro Technique helps timebox tasks in addition to prioritizing them. Both are required to stay focused and get into the flow.

Controversial, but get off Hacker News and get to work. Best trick ever.

You probably hear all the usual productivity hacks like promodoro, start with small things, constantly do it, switch off distractions, etc (which i do too in some form) but let me tell you an unorthodox technique I came up with that was inspired by this tweet - https://twitter.com/tkiramadden/status/1255516715502522370

For me, I don't always have an issue being productive when I am in the zone but I have a problem of sometimes being unable to "jump-start" into that mode. Its like the engineers/developers version of a writers block and I get the occasional mental block when I need to create something.

So what do I do to overcome this?

I gave $1,000 to a really trusted friend and told him, if I dont show him the thing I want to create by the end of the week, he can give that money to an organisation that I absolutely against with on principle (think brainwashing) and hate with my guts.

Boy, it was sure a motivator to my brain on day 5 or 6. :)

Fear. Nothing got me motivated to finish something like the fear of failing and the shame that I'd feel as a result. Not my favorite technique, and probably not what you're looking for, but I'm guessing half of my good accomplishments at work were based on that.

I would go with keyboard hacks and short keys commands. Specifically, on Mac, I use Hammerspoon, Karabiner, and Alfred. As we know the amount of time spent moving, pointing and clicking on repetitive tasks is completely wasted time. So, if I find myself doing the the same thing for a project or daily. I’ll make a short key for it. Whether it’s tiling windows, command line (e.g. srbt = sudo reboot), caps locks into super key/escape key... I’ve made it to where almost all the keys are able to be accessed from home row using a layer keys. Think something like SpaceVim for your keyboard.

This may sound preachy but I don't mean it to be. Turn your phone on dnd and practice checking it and email from your desktop no more than hourly. Use dnd on slack.

In the last year, I wrote a nonfiction book (History of Cosplay, coming sometime next year, if all goes well), and spend much of last summer conducting research. When it came time to write, I kept stalling out. What I ended up doing was shifting the font to Comics Sans, and boom! I ended up writing quickly and efficiently.

https://crushentropy.com/ It's like markdown for planning your day in high resolution. The hours no longer just slip through my fingers. I made it one weekend a couple of years ago and I've used it myself ever since. I'm not exaggerating when I say that my productivity has massively improved because of it.

I drink coffee. Take a deep breath put headphones with noise cancellation enabled and focus... is it a hack maybe ?