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Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks

51 points by mstolpm ↗ HN
Productivity, staying on focus, fighting distraction and procrastination and so on are often addressed in "Ask HN" threads, but it is difficult to find and keep track of the nuggets and best tips and tools mentioned in the responses.

So, let's use this thread to collect and share YOUR best tips, tools and ressources for personal productivity.

72 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] thread
MichaelCrawford
Here's One:

It's 4:30 AM. I am going to go to bed RIGHT NOW.

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brettlangdon
I like to take walks.

Sometimes when there is too much going on, I'm a little too restless or I just can't focus. I'll just get up and go for a short walk, try to clear my head, maybe tire myself out a bit. Usually gets me a little more relaxed.

dietrichepp
This is my favorite productivity hack.

If I'm stuck on a problem, I'll go for a walk. My hope is that I'll find a solution, but I often discover that I don't even need to solve the problem.

FrankenPC
A few decades back when I still smoked cigarettes, I really enjoyed simply getting out of the office on a periodic basis to gain perspective. No more cigarettes, but I still stand up and walk around the block. Still works great.
caio1982
Avoid multitasking as hell. Very few people can really afford it without going mad in the long run. At first it's very demotivating because you feel like stalling but then you'll naturally learn what (and how) you can micro-improve in your daily life to make the whole pipeline of TODOs more productive. I might not look very productive in the eyes of multitaskers, but at least I'm happy and totally not burned out.
arethuza
I'd say its best to try and find out what level of multitasking you can handle without becoming too stressed and/or unproductive - it does vary a lot from person to person.

Once you understand your own capacity for multitasking then fight to stay in that zone (and before anyone calls something like that a "comfort zone" its more like an "efficiency zone").

ivanche
Well if we are talking about true multitasking (working on more than one thing at the same time) then humans can't do that - we only have one CPU with one core, our brain. Some people can do scheduling and time-sharing well, that is they work on one thing for some time, then on second one for some time, then on third one, then they return to the first one etc. but that's not multitasking really.
raverbashing
"we only have one CPU with one core,"

"but that's not multitasking really."

Do you think single core computers don't do multitasking? They do it exactly this way.

falcolas
Computers have a context switching time of a few nanoseconds. People have a context switching time measured in the tens of minutes. If you do it too much, half of your day is consumed just switching your mental context between the tasks.
amelius
Use a language that allows you to be productive. For example, if you are using C++, and feel the burden of maintaining header files, then, if possible, switch to another language that doesn't need header files; or use a tool that automatically generates your header files.
dharma1
-Waking up really early, before sunrise, with no other distractions than a cup of tea and your work. Knowing you have 3-4 hours of uninterrupted time to get shit done, and someone to show the work after that.

Works better for me than burning the midnight oil (which works too but probably isn't as healthy).

-Not doing too many things at the same time (hard)

-Having a passion in what you are doing and being proud of the quality of the end result

-Some excercise helps to get the blood flowing and oxygen into your brain which I find helps with focus

bostonpete
I'm not necessarily disagreeing but what makes you say working extremely early hours is probably healthier than working extremely late hours?
dharma1
It depends on your situation but I find that it's easier to focus at the beginning of the day after a good night's rest than at the end of the day when your mind and body can be tired.

I also tend to (for various reasons) get better quality sleep if I go to bed early and wake up early. Human sleep cycles have probably aligned with the sun for a long time which (might) have biological effects favouring this type of circadian rhythm.

Plus seeing/photographing magnificent sunrises feels good :)

rm_-rf_slash
I wake up at 4 most mornings. I'm always at the peak of my energy at the 3.5 hours I have before I walk entirely uphill to work. After my descent I'm usually too worn out to get anything productive done, and since I start wrapping up my evening around 7-8, I don't sacrifice sleep.

My Chinese teacher put it best: "Early to rise, early to bed, leaves you healthy, wealthy, and socially dead."

ricklancee
Nice to know someone else is waking up really early. I started setting my alarm 5 minutes back each day toward my goal of waking up at 4am. I started at 7am now I am at 4:40am and I'm really liking it so far; I get stuff done this way.
tirant
To me, the start of a productive day beings with a good sleep the previous night. No need for coffee or other stimulants.

If possible a short nap after lunch (siesta) will also help stay energized for the rest of the day.

nns
I've recently started doing Yoga (mainly breath yoga - Pranayam) and Mindfulness.

30 minutes - first thing every morning.

It's unbelievable how much my energy levels and concentration have gone up!

alenox
I have a lot of productivity programs, calendar apps, todo lists, mind mapping software etc. etc... But the greatest tool in my arsenal is a notebook and a pen.

Every morning, before I start working, I browse my calendar, Omnifocus, notes from yesterday, and with my notebook, I write down the three things I absolutely want to get done today.

I don't always get those three things done, but I sure do make a lot of progress on them and feel good about my productivity at the end of the day.

Something about the ritual and physical act of writing stuff down with a pen really does it for me. When I forget to do this or start working without it, I feel directionless and will mostly just answer email and get inconsequential stuff done all day.

warmuuh
i am using a personal kanban board to organize my tasks and work on them one after another... if someone interrupts, i just add another task and continue working on the previous one
jdimov9
Here's what works for achieving extreme levels of hyper-creativity and hyper-productivity for me. Will it work for you? Yes. Will you do it? No, you will find endless excuses to call the below "impossible". Still, for anyone who dares, here it is:

1. Get as much sleep as you can. Consistently. Yes, it's counter-intuitive. Yes, you'll have fewer waking hours. But those few hours will be many times more productive and joyful.

2. Drink more water and eat fresh food. Eat less than you normally do.

3. Get plenty of fresh air and sunlight.

4. Get a good amount of physical activity throughout the day (exercise, walks, whatever works for you)

5. Get plenty of vacation time during the year. Do not do ANY work during your vacation time - focus on enjoying yourself. (Ideally, 1/3 of the year should be spent on vacation time)

6. Make a list of the 20 most important things you want to accomplish (near-term). Sort the list so that at the top you have the things that you feel most passionate about. Keep the top 2 items and scratch everything else (I don't mean de-prioritize - I mean scratch it / drop it / burn it / forget it / it ain't happening.)

7. Focus all of your time and attention on doing those things that are most exciting TO YOU personally. Whether those things have any utility to anyone other than you is irrelevant. You come first.

8. If there is anything else that still absolutely needs to be done - find a way to delegate it to someone who's good at that stuff.

9. You will be unstoppable.

tobr
This sounds very attractive. Can you share the context - what kind of work do you do, how do you get paid?
jdimov9
My circumstances are not TOO different from most other people on here (if anything, my lifestyle is probably more demanding than that of most). I certainly don't have any unusual wealth that allows me to dangle my feet most of the time, or anything like that.

I do software development and IT consulting and am gradually moving away from freelancing (where I do most of the work myself) towards just orchestrating things and streaming work through my company to other freelancers.

If you need even more context - I also have a family with 3 young children and the income that I generate is about 100% of our total family income.

atmosx
Did you get that list from some TED, Accelerator Speech or a book? Because it ain't realistic for 90% of the 'population'... which means it's unrealistic and pretty much useless.
DanBC
Wait what? Which steps are impossible for 90% of the population?
vrutberg
Not a lot of people can spend 1/3 of a year on vacation. I'm in Sweden and I consider my vacation time pretty generous (6 weeks per year), but still, I'm still nowhere near 1/3 of a year.
qntty
I assumed that holidays and weekends count as "vacation", in which case you are already there if you don't work on the weekends. If not, then yes it's definitely unrealistic for many.
halviti
Yes, but those 6 weeks are just your government sanctioned vacation. There's nothing stopping you from taking more time for yourself.

We get 5 weeks where I am, but I still make it a point to take at least 2 months off.

chrisjack
I think he meant time off (which is more realistic) Considering most people have 2 day off each week + the statutory holidays the 1/3 is actually achievable. (exemple for canada with 4 week off: 52*2=104 "week end" + 10 statutory holliday + 4 week (20 days) vacation= 134 days/365 = 37% more than 1/3)
dr_hercules
switch jobs after 12 months and take 6 months off (or rather "on" as I would say)
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jdimov9
The list is mostly mine (I didn't get it from anywhere), although I have, of course, been influenced by people who are more successful than me.

The most relevant influence is perhaps Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach. The bit where you pick the top 2 tasks and drop everything else I picked up from a Warren Buffet book a few years ago.

I fully agree with you - a lot of this is not practical for the vast majority of the population. I'm obviously no Warren Buffet, so I also don't have the luxury of doing this all the time. All I'm saying is that when I DO stick to this plan as much as possible, the results are amazing.

It takes a lot of courage to NOT do things that you think you MUST do but HATE doing. Once you blast through this fear, though, you will literally see miracles happen.

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crispweed
Been lucky enough to be following pretty much exactly this list recently. I confirm that it can work, in the sense of making you very productive, but it is also just a very enjoyable and fulfilling way to live. Yes, you have to earn money, and yes this can be an issue, but I think that a lot of companies lose out a lot by making it impossible for people to take this kind of approach in a more standard employment situation.
valevk
> Ideally, 1/3 of the year should be spent on vacation time

Show me one office job, where you have 4 months vacation.

jdimov9
Can't do this with an office job (even if you did get 4 months vacation).
qntty
Number 6 is probably the most useful advice on the list (for me at least). I have noticed that I can only ever really work on about 2 things at once, but I never seem to learn to stop trying to do more.

I'm curious if you would count your day job as an "accomplishment".

jdimov9
Try everything you can to get away from your day job and to some kind of working arrangement that gives you more free time.

With that said, while you are still at your day job, definitely count everything you do there as accomplishment. You can't hate your way out of a job (but you can sometimes love your way out of it).

arethuza
Are you including weekends as vacation time?
jdimov9
I personally don't differentiate between week-days and weekends. I often work on weekends (and probably just as often take weekdays completely off).

But generally, when I speak about vacation time in the context above, I mean it as in large continuous chunks of time during which you only unwind and regenerate (and ideally travel to some interesting place off the beaten track).

arethuza
That does make sense, but I suspect most people do differentiate between weekends and vacation/holidays which explains why some comments are reacting to your suggestion when it's actually quite sensible.
falcolas
7 of 9. Numbers 6 and 7 are really hard at the moment, as I'm constrained by the expectations of a manager, who is also a friend.

That said, I'll agree that it does work. And I'll even submit my idea of why most people will consider it "impossible". Understanding the difference between hours spent tapping on a keyboard and productivity takes experience.

I didn't have that experience 15, 10, even 2 years ago, so the idea of being able to "do" less and get more out of it was quite foreign.

It works, though. :)

dr_hercules
I guess if you follow those nine rules for a year - your head will clear up that much - you will realize how pointless this carrot-in-front-of-donkey-style-career-rat-race is and get off!
rm_-rf_slash
Call a friend once a day at roughly the same time. Catch up on what you two have been up to, talk about what you've accomplished in the last 24 hours, and discuss what you'd like to get done before the next call.

No app or self-help book could ever replace the shame from letting down someone you respect.

bechampion
calling isn't cool anymore , we want to be cool.
rm_-rf_slash
You're free to make an Apple Watch app that sends each other's heartbeats through morse code if you're that determined to be no fun at parties.
tawan
Given a set of tasks T, that have to be done, and the tasks are interdependent.

Sort T by difficulty to complete. Complete one task after the other starting with the hardest.

This approach goes against the often spread advice that you should start with the easiest tasks, which are probably fast to complete, in order to get quickly a feeling of accomplishment which keeps you motivated. I think this approach is wrong and here is why:

IMO our brains always weigh risk multiplied with investment against reward, and as long as the reward outweighs (risk * investment), we are motivated: Risk meaning here, that you invest time and effort but eventually you miss the deadline and are not paid the full reward. The more time we let pass, without completing anything, then the risk of not getting the rewards becomes bigger and eventually it is not worth our effort anymore, and our brain finds more rewarding things to do (procrastinates). So why should we start with the hard tasks first?

Because, given that we start with the easy ones first, we reduce the available time to complete the hard tasks, and by the time that we start with the hard ones, the risk of failing becomes too big in order to be still motivated. In contrary, when we start with the hard ones, of course it takes longer to finish them, and the time left for the easy ones is less, but our brain can easily estimate the risk of easy tasks, and it will find that it's quite possible to get the final rewards, because we already finished the hard ones.

The realisation changed my life. I completed my CS master studies within 15 months.

charlieirish
"Opportunity looks a lot like hard work"

Whilst I don't love this quote, it represents a problem that I see often: people are asking for tools and techniques to achieve better productivity when often, it's about discipline. I wrote more about how discipline and why it's important here[0], with a particular story about how my father's time in the British Army taught me a few things.

However, there are certainly a few strategies that we can all use to combat our irrational behaviour and get things done rather that procrastinate (on hacker news all day!):

Make Time

Stop saying you don't have time. It's up to you to make time. If it's important enough, you can do it. Read more at 'Make Time for Your Side Project' [2].

Timeboxing

This is a simple technique (similar to using a pomodoro timer) that defines a start point and a fixed time for completing a task. Often starting is the key to finishing.

Mise-en-Place

Prepare for success by getting the environment right and ready. Make it easy for you to jump in to a piece of work without any 'set up' time. Give yourself the chance to succeed by removing any potential distractions.

Celebrate Small Victories

Allow yourself a pat on the back. Completing small tasks can give you enough of an adrenaline rush to start the next task. Then you're on a roll!

Stop Aiming Too High

This is something I suffer from all the time. I see so much great work out there that I'm constantly embarrassed to launch. This 'fear of the launch'[3] can be dealt with. It's about overcoming your anxieties to produce something 'epic' by purposefully launching something below your comfort threshold. True success is often journey paved with small, iterative launches.

For more, you might want to read the previous discussion on Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)[1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864959

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864525

[2] http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side-project/

[3] http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/fear-of-the-launch/

Zolomon
Adding "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" to the hosts file.
qntty
how's that working out for you? :P
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olalonde
My biggest productivity boost as a developer has been switching to a Vim, tmux and more recently Docker based development environment. Whereas it used to take me quite a while to get my environment started and get in the flow, it now takes just a few seconds with a simple "tmuxinator start projectname". It's especially helpful when you often switch between projects that have different languages and stacks.
dagw
Don't feel you need to do everything yourself. Try to get people who can run interference for you, know what to ignore and know when to delegate.
marak830
At work? I struggle there too.

At home doing my own coding? Light beer(as light as i can get, i want to take the edge off, not get drunk), a movie/music on the tv that i have seen/heaed a lot before.

Honestly the drink is a crutch, but i cant program more than once a week, so it seems to work for me. (Time constraints due to work/wife), but in my current project helps me relax enough, forget about my dayjob and focus for 3-4 hours.

raverbashing
- Good ergonomy of workstation (not staying crouched on a laptop computer for example)

- Find your most productive times of the day and manage your day around it

- Take notes and have yourself be notified (for important stuff) instead of polling (unless the frequency is too big, then poll for a large time

spectrum1234
1- Hit the gym most mornings 2- Stand at your desk an hour in the morning and an hour after lunch 3- Always be sure you are working on the #1 priority task 4- Don't each like crap 5- Get enough sleep

People underrate standing. I can literally feel my brain being more productive.

qntty
I like the standing suggestion. I don't know how many hours the average standing-desker stands at their desk but 2 hours seems like a very realistic goal.
alphadevx
1. Each morning write down the 5 most important things you need to do that day.

2. Do those things.

3. That's it.

honest_joe
Get a lot of caffeine pills.
dayone
this is very bad for your health. if possible avoid any caffinated drinks or stitch to healthier ones like green tea.