Hey Guys šš½,
Hope everyone is OK. When learning (reading a lot) i've found myself getting distracted easily so today I thought to try the Pomodoro...
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Alongside the Pomodoro technique I make sure I actively get up from my desk and go for a little walk around the office and try to have a quick chat to the other devs (provided they are not in the middle of something, obviously). Just doing a quick lap of the office helps clear my head.
cool, thanks thats my next goal, step away rather than play with my phone š
To me the biggest productivity technique is: remote working.
And the biggest productivity killer is Slack
I don't like distractions (that's another good reason for working from home) and Slack is demanding your attention constantly. I prefer to communicate in asynchronous ways like the email. I can close my email app and answer all emails later on. You can't do that with Slack where everybody expect you to answer immediately.
Some great points raised Jorge. Totally agree with the Slack! Iāve learnt to switch off distractions now, still a little improvement required though
DISCLAIMER, not making a truth claim or anything of that nature. Just sharing personal workflows that work for me...
For productivity (macOS):
For attentiveness:
thanks for a great list Derek. I use alfred and the ā already, will try some of the other stuff.
welcome š¤š½!
Cool, yeah Alfred3 is awesome! If you haven't wired up some workflows yet github.com/zenorocha/alfred-workflows are plug and play. There's also a workflow to integrate kapeli.com/dash.
Oh and if you haven't already set up Alfred3's clipboard history management, you might want to look into that as well. For all things copy š.
š® mind blown right now. Had no idea Alfred could do all that. Thank you
If a task takes less than 5 minutes do it straight away.
Keep a log of work done each day and a separate list of jobs to do ordered by priority.
select which tasks you want to accomplish each day, if you are implemeting a new feature ensure it is broken down to stories and tasks which are no more than 4 hours at most.
headphone are essential to remove background conversations in an open plan office.
always look to improve the workflow and clean code as you go
Thanks John. I love the < 5 mins idea. Started applying it today :)
Music + remove distractions. Simple things as silent notifications, remove too many chrome tabs (twitter and medium are my main distractions), use headphones (colleagues tend to not interrupt my focus).
cool, thanks. Distractions is a big one for me too. I have learnt to avoid them but can improve
I'm really big on batching work. It's where you do similar tasks all at once and hyper-focus on those tasks before moving on to another one. I also will shut off notifications on everything when I need to do deep work.
I also like going into work super early in order to work on personal stuff so that I don't hit traffic on the way in. (My commute goes from 20 mins to 1.5 hrs if I leave late). I also stay late for the same reason.
As far as apps go, I love Google Inbox (RIP), TweetDeck, TicTic for todos, and text expander for responding to similar messages. In addition, I don't really do phone notifications other than text/call.
š Ali, you are a constant source of inspiration so thank you. Only today I took some of your mac set up tips and tricks - very cool.
Got to check this list now too. Yes bummer about inbox ā¹ļø There was a cool alternative but the were acquired.
Sometimes music helps me stay focused. I do have some days where I'm more distracted than others though! Interested in giving the pomodoro technique another go.
Hey Lynne,
Thanks for getting back! Yes I think music helps too, but I read a lot of docs lol so sometimes it gets a little noisy too. Yes I would definitely say give pomodoro another try. I'm on day two and i feel so much more productive š
Ah yeah, I agree it can be more distracting when reading! For coding, sometimes I'll choose music that has no lyrics, like film soundtracks or dance or something. I'll give the pomodoro technique a try today :) do you use a specific app or anything for it?
Thanks, I have thought about music-only tracks before - will give it a try. Yes, i have been using this extension. Its open source and does the trick. Do let us know how you get on.
musicforprogramming.net
Also, your link to the chrome extension was broken. Seemingly did to the registered trademark character, here:
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/....
Thanks for that suggestion. I'd been using tomtato-timer.com
thanks buddy will try it out!
Everyone is different, so what works for me may or may not work for you. But since I started working on my current project I've been experimenting with a new way of increasing productivity by being conscious of flow state and its conditions and it's working quite well for me.
Things that don't work for me:
I hope this list is useful for someone out there!
WOW, thank you Yves, for such great detail and introducing some alternative concepts. Things that I can try in the coming weeks.