Do less and develop habits.

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.

Productive toward what goal?

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.

Habits are by far the most important thing. Making a habit is hard. Keeping a habit not as hard, but it's easy to fall off. But so long as you can keep a habit going, you'll do much better than without it.

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.

I think the biggest game-changer for me is writing down my plan for the next day in the evening.

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.

This is also my go-to technique when I’m too tired to think at the end of the day. I just pick a marker and write 3 things I want to do tomorrow — just write it down with your gut feeling. The feeling in the morning when you see what you wrote in previous night gives you a boost to your willpower and gives you a sense of direction in your day. It’s just something so small, but it works great for me.

For me, the big one is sleep. My productivity seems to increase in general. Here are some techniques:

- 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.

Sounds like you're looking for more hacks.

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.

Drugs.

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.)

You need habits that reward your dopamine triggers in a sustainable way. Some people that's big projects being done and they can ride that high. Others need small tasks and a checklist. Still others are in between and require both.

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.)

I tried a bunch of stuff that some worked and others didn't.

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.

Donald Knuth, for example, don't use email https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

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

1. Prioritize - what is my primary task for today?

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.

Schedule deep conversations with friends so you feel less tempted to scroll facebook.

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

Motivation is fleeting. Discipline is king. Just figure out what you want to do, and stick to a plan - even if it's just a few minutes a day.

Shambhavi kriya / meditation.

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

could you provide some links on YT productivity influencers?

I write things I need to do down, I do things that take 5 min or less right now, and I don't read about current events more than once per week for about 30 minutes, and I limit myself to HN for social media and turn no 'noprocrast' so I can come here only once per day for 60 minutes. I find that if I follow these rules, I get things done at a reasonable pace since I am limited from the time sucks.