Ask HN: What was your most productive (day|week|month|year) ever? It could also be someone else's. What happened that day, and what techniques have you developed to try to recreate that day? I'm asking because I've been more productive these past weeks since I completely blocked out social media on my machine and I put my phone in another room during work hours, and I should have done that years ago. :( |
Occasionally, I work non-stop for a few days on some programming projects, but I wouldn't consider myself productive. I get very excited and obsessed by the coding but I'm not very efficient, in the sense I tend to code more than I think and it's counter productive.
My schedule made this possible. All my classes started in the afternoon and ended at 10 at the latest. This matched with my natural levels of productivity perfectly. Reading and podcasts in the morning, homework/class in the afternoon, and pure output at night. It was perfect and I know I'll be spending the next while trying create the conditions to live like that again.
I can sometimes get into that state when working as a contractor, but it's very rare.
When I average the year, I have been having more productive years more or less consistent. Like the global warming, the year that wasn't really productive was still higher than the least productive year before the last peak.
Well, with all that said, some patterns seemed clear to me:
1 - Societal overload: that place and country you live directly affect your productivity. I lived for many years in the biggest city of a 3rd World country, where the government works daily to make your life miserable and hard. The moment I moved to Europe, I had a surge of productivity because those "little" things that rob you of your energy were gone: the violence, the crappy infrastructure, and a technology market generations behind than the 1st World.
2 - Peers Level: being the ugliest among the pretty is better than being the prettiest among the ugly. When you are the least good among very competent engineers you have a lot of opportunities to learn from people that know more and better than you. You become a sponge of methods that can help you to work better and faster.
3 - Reused experience: The best world scenario is to be a generalist and be able to work on whatever is thrown at your hands because you are clever and skilled. However, it doesn't mean that you can't get really skilled and experienced in some aspect of your craft. For instance, through the years I become an expert on bootstrapping greenfield projects and prepare to hand them over to a team that will look after them. This has been invaluable and my longest days streak happened in this situation.
4 - Keep reassessing your toolset all the time: we tend to feel comfortable and confident with the tools we know how to use. That's fine. But keep an eye open to new technologies. There might be one new technology that solves (or attempts to solve) some fundamental problem that you daily face - that if it didn't exist, you would be even more productive.
5 - Manage your attention: nowadays we live in a world perfected to steal your attention. Learn how to manage it effectively. You can't be productive if you are distracted or constantly interrupted.
I hope it helped you. (PS: HN is a huge attention stealer.)
I don't think my investments were pure luck as I read a lot about the long term pricing of commodities. Right now my net worth is mainly Bitcoin (I still believe it's highly undervalued), and I didn't change it, but I didn't want to sound like an average Bitcoin promoter, as that's not what I wanted this comment to be about.
Also I quit my job as I don't need to work anymore in my life (that's why I made this account as a throwaway)
First factor was reading a book that changed my perspective. When I was a consultant, simply spending 5hrs reading a book on negotiation returned an additional 200k over the next 36mos.
Second is the time I took all my vacation at once and spent three weeks with a teacher learning a physical skill. It gave me the confidence to level up massively in my career.
Third was after taking a month long motorcycle trip across the US. I developed multiple decks and wireframes for startups I would return to and make the focus of my life today.
The theme in them was interrupting the nagging chatter of my ego and its anxieties and the need for external approval, which came from unstable relationships and social media (same thing).
The result was periods of pure performance where stuff comes out like you are singing it. The way I get into the zone today is to do something that pushes me past a limit of ego/anxiety resistance. Either by getting coaching and instruction, becoming absorbed in the complex ideas of a book or new area of knowledge, or physical accomplishment.
There was a comment here the other day about junior and intermediate programmers completing the fist %80 of a project, then leaving the remaining %20 to the next person - who recommends chucking it and refactoring, only to complete that initial %80 again.That %80 productivity that comes from learning something new is massive, but it's not sufficient to deliver the polished %20 that makes a product.
The zone for me today is bursts of staccato productivity against that last %20, with a view forward against where it will yield diminishing returns.
As a manager, the very best way to wreck flow is to put choices on staff and then criticize them for the results. There is this anti-pattern (I call it a false-Socratic dialogue) where ostensibly intelligent people present their staff with choices, thinking it's educating them to "choose right," when the overall effect is to just punish them randomly for making independent decisions.
The constant theme in 10x developers I have observed is that they don't internalize interruptions from others. Often this is because they miss or ignore the social cues of concern and approval that derail others flow, either because of a spectrum thing, confidence from better options, or the narcissism that helps some people succeed.
The flow I develop through these other factors is related to that state in that the anxiety from uncertainty in how I relate is silenced, and I can create freely. As a result, the last 4 months on my demo have been immensely productive.
What are you working on? What did you work on?
If you haven't read a book on topic-x, the first one is going to change your perspective pretty radically and put you in that iterative and open learning mode.
The activity (see post history for clues;)) was about sublimating that same ego/anxiety by accepting guidance and instruction from a great teacher who had mastered something.
Super productive and high achieving people tend to have absorbing hobbies for (I think) related reasons. It's not that there is a "trick," it's that there is a general effect that all those tricks produce, which is that state of creative flow that results from removing our negative self-conscious reactions.
IMHO, for me that included silencing self-critical mental filters by overloading them with stimuli from things like constructive authority, physical exhaustion, and awe and excitement at a new body of knowledge.
My thinking is that the things people do as flow and inspiration hacks roll up into this overall process.
It was amazing. I felt so alive. However, at this point, I could (somewhat tongue in cheek) credit this week with ultimately ruining my life and career. I became obsessed with recapturing that feeling, and with finding a way to support myself with my own work (as opposed to the company's work). I quit my job one year later and happily worked on my own stuff for the next 2 years. This began a pattern of living on the ramen budget, being a single hermit, only going to work when I'm broke, and quitting after a year or less. Disastrous. Why, as I write this, I haven't gone to work in over 2 years, and I'm broke again and looking for a job. I have unprofitable side-projects and repos out the wazoo though.
What makes me most productive is when I truly love what I'm working on.
Thinking out aloud, the things you may like about what you were doing: creativity, problem solving, programming, the debug loop, focus etc probably exist in other tasks.
However, in order to be useful there are many "boring" to you (but interesting to others) things that have to be done: someone has to raise money to support you while you work on it, someone has to convince others they should spend money on it and so forth.
Ideally, you would focus on what you love, but let others do the parts you don't, which is exactly what a company ought to be.
Perhaps you can recapture that feeling in the context of a company.
The main problems: Autonomy, ownership, and true responsibility. Even for people with 'senior' in their title, on many teams/companies these are nowhere to be found.
The first time I did this, my project was never released, but it directly got me my next job. It was a very good job, and I wouldn't have landed it otherwise. The second time I did this, I found a job pretty quickly. This is the third time, and the first time that recruiters are all drilling me about the gaps and why I quit each job. Drilling me. I'm getting the distinct impression that I'm starting to push my luck, and plus I'm old now.
I suspect that's true for almost everybody, hah. I can really grind it for a month when I've stumbled upon an intriguing new side project
But, like, why oh why could I not have had a passion for bingo cards and money ... sniff.
My best friend was also faced with a harsh deadline at the time, having to finish his bachelor degree before a certain date so we made a covenant to study at the library together this entire day, every day, for that quarter.
I made a crazy ambitious plan to complete exams for 9 courses, worth 45 EC in total. There was some low hanging fruit that I just had to read the course material for, but also some (for me) hard courses. I think 2 calculus courses, Algorithms Data structures and Complexity and a Discrete Mathematics I. Especially that last one was giving me a hard time, having failed the exam three times already even though most of my friends felt it was a fairly easy maths course.
I look back at those few months fondly. Although I was socially isolated, not going to parties not seeing any friends besides just that one, I grew closer to him and I felt good because we just were so productive.
Of those 9 courses I failed two, yielding 35 EC in just one quarter. I know there's geniuses out there that do that sort of thing on the regular, but for me just passing a single maths test was an achievement, let alone passing 6 more in the same week.
I started something I called "12 hours of productivity". It didn't matter what time I got started in the morning, but from then until 12 hours later I was being productive.
* I wouldn't get on reddit, Facebook, or similar sites.
* I could be doing class work, be in class, do club stuff, or study. I would eventually run out of club stuff. Even if I procrastinated with that, eventually I'd have to move on to school work.
* a few short breaks were included
My productivity soared, though I couldn't have done it for long term (years). It got me through the semester from hell though.
Consistency is key in life! With everything, working out, eating healthy, raising children.
If I can accomplish a couple (maybe only one) things in that four hour period in the morning I feel good.
I also like to go to the gym around 3 in the afternoon. The gym time gives me a little time to reflect and plan. And then after that I have a good 2 hours of "endorphin" rush to work some more before I start getting tired and relax, do some more planning, research (not implementation stuff) for tomorrow.
Eating healthy seems key too. I've never been a breakfast person, but I force myself to eat some protein and maybe some fruit so I'm not crashing (and then eating the wrong) thing mid-morning.
I've also got a 5 year which can drain the energy levels, so I need to plan so I can spend time with him at night.
In a 24 period, I saved a customer's hundred thousand dollar sale by redoing a hand written assembly function synchronized between three cores. I ended up with something single core and 10,000x faster.
Before that day, I'd never touched assembly language, the customer's hardware, the processor family, the problem space, an oscilloscope, nor anything embedded outside an Arduino.
Story here, forgive the writing style: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14637859#14639134
> The programming session lasted 10 hours. Throughout that entire time, Steele says, neither he nor Stallman took a break or made any small talk. By the end of the session, they had managed to hack the pretty print source code to just under 100 lines. "My fingers were on the keyboard the whole time," Steele recalls, "but it felt like both of our ideas were flowing onto the screen. He told me what to type, and I typed it."
> The length of the session revealed itself when Steele finally left the AI Lab. Standing outside the building at 545 Tech Square, he was surprised to find himself surrounded by nighttime darkness. As a programmer, Steele was used to marathon coding sessions. Still, something about this session was different. Working with Stallman had forced Steele to block out all external stimuli and focus his entire mental energies on the task at hand. Looking back, Steele says he found the Stallman mind-meld both exhilarating and scary at the same time. "My first thought afterward was: it was a great experience, very intense, and that I never wanted to do it again in my life."
> - Guy Steele on a hacking session with RMS in the 1970s.
I always like this story. And I wish I had an experience like it.
One day I decided to order a coffee while eating at McDonalds because I didn't feel like drinking soda and I wanted something different. I drank it, didn't sleep for 24 hours but got a massive amount of things done with a new found focus
Since then, I like coffee
- Delete Snapchat, Instagram, Messenger from phone
- Disable notifications for all messaging apps (including badge count)
- Keep Do Not Disturb (iOS) on a schedule during work hours
- Disable all notifications on MacOS
- Use software that distract less. For me this means removing every single button I don't need. Hide all the things!
- Eliminate clutter on desks. I don't keep anything on my desk that is not related to the current task
Here is my favourite thing at the moment: set /ONE/ to do. To do lists are productivity killers for me, because I'm constantly looking and thinking ahead, instead of focusing the problem I am solving now.
In Visual Studio Code, for instance, I use the plugin `title`. This is very simple, it lets me set the title of the window. In the title of the window I write what I'm doing. For instance: "Clean up user model".
Edit: one more thing. Give your setup some love. If you're working on your computer all day, keep making your environment more friendly and relaxing. This can be software; customizing the colors to your liking, customizing keyboard-shortcuts; or it can be hardware such as a better chair or a stand for your monitors. I recently bought Ergotron HX Desk Dual Monitor Arm for my monitors, and it increases my happiness and thus my productivity.
I’m writing this on an iPad Pro, which is my computing device for recreational things. I don’t have social media. The niche sites/forums I belong to I can only access from this iPad or my phone. My workstations are for work only and Hacker News and other sites that I frequent are blocked. I disable notifications—no messages, no popups, no email—just work!
In terms of time spent during a week, I spend more time as a single father than I do as a software consultant. My time working is focused and productive but short. On days that I don’t feel productive I tackle the low hanging fruit. On days that I am productive, I go for it.
Sounds like you’re taking the right steps.
Instead of classic Todo - Doing - Done, my board is divided into Todo - Monday - Tuesday - ... - Sunday - Done. The board contains both work-related and private tasks. If a new task comes up randomly during the day, I just add it to the board and immediately resume whatever I was doing. Since I've scheduled the new task for later, it's not occupying my mind anymore.
The app has a built-in pomodoro timer. I don't necessarily use it in a strict sense (100% deep work) but I don't do any non-work-related tasks when the timer is on, so it helps me fight procrastination and schedule my breaks.
I've blocked most sites that I identified as time-wasters. My phone is in my drawer on "silent" and I usually don't pick up the phone at all during my working hours.
I've noticed that one of the most important things for me is gaining momentum. If I work 2-3 pomodoros first thing in the morning, it's usually going to be a productive day overall, but if I start with procrastinating, the whole day often ends up not very productive. So I pay much attention to how I start the day.
On a not strictly work-related note, going to bed and waking up at the same time significantly improved my overall life satisfaction. During my last holidays, I took measurements how much sleep I naturally need (~7.5h) when there's no pressure to wake up early. Then I started taking care to always be in bed at a set time (11 p.m.) and get the right amount of sleep.
Every time I got stuck, I stopped and walked again. I think I only did about 2 hours of 'work' that day, but it would have taken me weeks to do under normal circumstances and distractions. I slept like a log that night.
Also, the script proved immensely useful at debugging appserver crashes.
The key wasn’t focusing on productivity, it’s balance. When you feel like you’re spending the right amount of time on the people you care about, the work you need to do, the work you want to do, and most importantly, yourself, the productivity will happen. Otherwise, your body is trying to tell you that something is off balance.
This period of "productivity" taught me a lot. As a lot of folks here are already aware, it is a slow and difficult process to increase the workload one can handle. Temporary support from things like caffeine, sugar, alcohol or drugs can extend these periods making it easy, but over time the effect weakens as you become more familiar with the mental state, making the initial support a crutch. Years later when completing my masters, I found the urge to fall back on some of the habits incredibly appealing during the weeks when I felt stressed and wanted to go on "autopilot". If I look at the future productivity earned from the compound interest of staying up, angry and upset, but still working through the discomfort, then I have had nights that were 10x what that semester in college was, because those nights will yield 100s of hours in the future that I would otherwise not be able to work through.
Haven't been able to recreate it, as it was only possible due to being at university with a fairly light timetable and a very close gym.
I find being surrounded by people working on different elements to bring something together much more motivating and productive than banishing all outside disturbances. This might be because marketing is less in need of "the zone" than programming, but frankly, having that direct accountability of working with other people on pulling a campaign together really gets me focused and firing at 100%.
When I'm doing that, I don't seem to get distracted by notifications, bloated software, my phone, Facebook, HN etc...
My most productive period where I was managing a campaign launch, but working with my peers. It skews a bit if you're either managing from atop or below, because when you're at the same level there's camaraderie that makes it just click (great colleagues being a requisite, of course).
[This isn't an extrovert/introvert point either, I'm the latter, and whilst this way of working is draining from that perspective, it seems to be highly productive for me.]
Here's what I did:
* I went to a vacation rental * I had someone with me to handle non-code things who would leave me alone to work even though we were in the same 1BR apt * I had a tiny office with one entire wall being a window looking out over city, which was a wonderful combination of low local distraction combined with a broad distance full of things to occupy my surface attention while thinking * I ate only after work, by planning, so that I didn't think about meals or snacks for most of the working day
I did not turn off social media. Well, in those days it was a combo of slashdot and about 10 messaging systems; the problem with actually not checking messages is that I worry about what I'm missing, but if they're on (or I think they are...) and I'm not getting anything, then I don't think about them for hours on end.
The key was to get off the grid, shed all responsibilities, take long walks in the woods, avoid dopamine loops, and let my mind wander without purpose.
Just out of curiosity, how did you prepare for this? Did you let your family/friends know you were going to be off grid? Did you stock food in a remote cabin somewhere? Did you keep regular working hours?
No working hours at all. Full vacation mode. No direction, no purpose, no obligations.
On mobile, turn off all non-human notifications and alerts.
Sundays are the most productive for me. I use a weekly checklist on Taskade [1] to help me track my progress throughout the week, and on Sundays I would archive the list and start a new one from the templates.
[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...
However, I also know that especially the part where "I might start working part-time if I feel there's still potential in it" has a lot of wiggle-room for bargaining in terms of whether there's really potential. But then at least it'll just be a side project again, which will hopefully keep me grounded :)