Tired of productivity “hacks”. What long term techniques have worked for you?

Environment is very important. Make sure you're comfortable in your environment. You're far more productive when you don't have stressors or anxiety cluttering your mind.

Stick to at most 5 rules to life. Any more and you'll end up chasing your tail more often than not.

For example, mine are:

- Eat right, sleep well, and get plenty of exercise.

- Communication makes or breaks almost everything.

- Guard jealously your friends and family time.

- If you're putting something off or avoiding someone/something, ask yourself why.

- Take pride in what you do, or else find something else you're better suited to.

Also, using extensions like TomatoTimer to make sure I don't get distracted by impulsive browsing. It's amazing how frequently I'll go through a cycle of browsing to HN, getting blocked, browsing to Reddit, getting blocked, and so on before realising what I'm doing on autopilot. That happens a lot when I've got something boring to do, not so much when I'm coding.

Otherwise, I think others have covered it well, regarding eating, moving and sleeping.

Writing. And re-reading what I wrote as a method to refine my thoughts.

Every day I wake up, meditate for an hour, exercise, and then drink coffee while writing down 2-3 things I want to accomplish that day. Sometimes just one thing.

At the end of the month I review what I did, and think about what I want to do next month.

I don’t read news or anything online until after dinner. I don’t open my phone at all during the day. Leisure is strictly for after dinner. If I take a break during the day its to go for a walk or sit outside and drink a tea with no phone.

If you constantly feel behind it’s probably because you’re trying to do too many things. Focus on one thing to do each day and do it after your morning routine.

habits, routines, mindfulness, mantras, mindsets... you're going to hear it all

Maybe it would be first helpful to better understand your problem? Are you?

- Digitally Distracted? You can't stay off HN, Twitter, FB

- A Chronic Procrastinator? You can't will yourself to start work

- Scatterbrained? You jump from thing to thing, never finishing important things?

Assumptions are inherently built into advice, so if you’re looking for some guidance, it may help to be as clear and specific about your problem.

I require small dopamine hits throughout the day. Big projects mean nothing to me.

(Dopamine in this case is stuff that makes me feel good. I care not to debate if that's the right word.)

Not telling you should stop using it. Just to give a thought.

Recently I got an idea. "Laziness is not an emotion, is a reaction. I'm choosing to be lazy right now". By taking accountability that I'm in control of feeling lazy, I can shut it down, get up, and start doing.

If applicable, get actual psychiatric treatment for ADHD and work with a coach.

2. Focus - say no to everything that distracts from #1

3. Unless you're my primary task today, I will only communicate with you via chat/email, not via voice/webcam.

I found it hard to stay on-track when developing side-projects. Then I needed an efficient way to find call-stacks for a good number (~100) of code lines from endpoints (REST, GraphQL, or module public) endpoints in a huge Ruby codebase. I hacked together some ripgrep scripts and put a web front-end on it. It was super hacky but done in a day and a half, got the job done and didn't look half bad. Now I want to wrap that with a script so I can automate a bit more.

The point of the story is that for developing software, you have to know the problem you are trying to solve. If you yourself are experiencing the exact thing, then you know what matters and what doesn't. If you're solving it for some other folks, you have to understand exactly what matters and doesn't for them.

- If we go to bed late, just wake up late

- Sleep in a dark room. Close all curtains. Reduce the sunlight in the morning. Actually, don't let external triggers to wake us up (e.g. morning's sunlight, alarm clock). If our bodies want to wake up, they'll wake up by themselves. My current theory is: if our bodies need sleep, we need to sleep more. It's almost impossible to sleep if our bodies don't need sleep. So, we should acquire more sleep until our bodies don't need more.

- Sleep with bedroom's doors open. We want more oxygen. The bedroom with bad ventilation is a CO2 hotspot.

- Reduce caffeine intake little by little every day

- Make ourselves comfortable e.g. use humidifier if you feel dry in your throat during night time, adjust foot/leg position, maybe add a pillow, so your foot stays at a comfortable orientation, add mattress topper. Comfort is personal... so we need to experiment.

(of course, there are exceptions.. sometimes we need to wake up early. But it shouldn't be a norm)

Another somewhat big one is to setup my working desk properly. I avoid working directly on the laptop. The screen is too small to sustain long working hour.

I tried meditation. Somehow it isn't for me (e.g. I am bothered that I have to meditate and etc.). But the recommendation on meditation is extremely strong, as in everyone in the world suggests it. I might try picking it up again.

Serious. See if you have any level of ADHD and if so, get medication for it. I somehow managed to get through most of my 20s without medication. With the meds, my productivity is on an entirely different level.

I lived through most of my life without it and I can tell you the difference is night and day.

(To be clear, you'll still need good habits, routines and motivation but all those things come a lot easier with the right brain chemistry.)