How do you organize your working day? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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3887 sats \ 21 comments \ @franzap 17 May 2023 bitcoin

Hey all, I'm trying to better organize my working days. I have several things on my plate and I think I'm context switching too much so many times I don't wrap the day feeling very productive. I recently came across Deep Work by Cal Newport and want to try that extremely focused approach. The best thing I do is use an outliner (second brain) which is a great help.

How do you plan your workday?
Do you limit SN/social media in some way or use browsing blockers?
Do you limit the number of concurrent projects?
How do your breaks look like?
If you cook at home are there tricks you use to optimize the time it takes?
Where does family time, walking, chilling, working out fit in your day?

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813 sats \ 1 reply \ @pillar 17 May 2023

A few ideas on some points you touch:

Working out: I have all I need at home (pullup bar, basic set of weights). I do my strength training in around 20-30 min. Sometimes I even use the minute of rest between sets to cook. I couldn't be fit if I had to go somewhere like a gym to train, it just takes a lot of time. Unless you are into lifting super-heavy and you need advanced equipment, why not stay at home?
Meals:
- Rule #1 is to have your kitchen well stocked. Every saturday, I decide what I'll eat during the next week. Then, I write what I need in order to cook all of that and I go and buy it. This way, I never find myself not having the ingredients I need.
- Rule #2: always cook some extra servings. If I do pasta bolognese for someone else and me, I'll actually cook 4 or 6 servings of sauce instead of 2. The additional servings go to the freezer. Now I can have lunch some week day in 15min by just boiling pasta and heating up the sauce again (and I'll probably do that while I work out). So, I get a healthy, home cooked, tasty lunch and workout in ~30 min. If you want to take this to the extreme, you can do some batch cooking on the weekend and have all your meals for the week. I don't need to got that far, so I don't.
- Not a rule, but more of a tip: knowing how to cook a lot of different things let's you find meals that suit your life (due to the time you have right now for cooking, due to the ingredients you have right now if your fridge, etc). Investing in knowing how to cook many different meals provides you more flexibility that makes things easier.

On the rest of them: my work organization is a mess. But let me challenge you here: why do you wanna be so crazy efficient?

I think it's much more important to pick the right tasks than to be crazy productive in doing them. I don't mean to say being productive is not nice, but I wouldn't obsess over it. There is a lot of people doing stupid/unnecessary/pointless stuff in a super efficient way, effectively getting them... nowhere.

Instead, you could make sure you are doing the right things, peacefully do them at a normal, sustainable pace, and happily go to sleep every night knowing you did what you could and you are one step closer to whereever it is you want to be.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Lots of great tips, thank you!

Not obsessing over productivity, simply trying to eliminate some time waste. Some are low hanging fruit so I'll act on those. Fortunately I wind down early every night and happily go to sleep.

Working out: I prefer to work out outdoors because I get sunlight/daylight, greenery and grounding for free (all three paramount for health) while I train

Meals: Weekly groceries and batch cooking (within reason) sound great, can optimize some of the dishwashing too

545 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 May 2023

I've recently started a new plan to deal with frequent context switching and getting bogged down in low marginal value work. Each week, I'm ranking my top four priorities and devoting one day to each of them.

That might mean limiting your number of concurrent projects, or just putting some on the back burner for a week.

I'm a big proponent of taking breaks to stretch or walk around, whenever you start feeling burnt out.

Fortunately for me, my wife handles the meals.

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Most of the time I use a timer so I stretch/walk outside/look far away after an hour or so of work.

Definitely will start ranking and leaving some projects in the back burner, appreciate that one

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 19 May 2023

Good luck. Let us know if you anything really unlocks your productivity.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Will do, thanks!

689 sats \ 1 reply \ @m00ninite 17 May 2023

On days I want to get work done, I change my environment ever so slightly to change the tone. My PC I work at is the same as the one I use for entertainment, so this part is pretty important for me. Maybe you put up a shoji screen or change the temperature of the lights in the room, or open the blinds. Maybe just throwing on some background music.. Whatever ends up working for you.

If you have the freedom to do so, dedicate a weekday as a day to get non-work stuff done. I call these my admin days.. Days that are dedicated to doing chores, shopping, making appointments.. That sort of thing.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Admin days sounds great actually, concentrate many potential distractions in one day (or half day)

529 sats \ 1 reply \ @VinoTinto 17 May 2023

How do you plan your workday? - look outside and check the weather, if it's raining something computer related. Sunny garden/wood work.


Do you limit SN/social media in some way or use browsing blockers? Definitely 30 minutes in the morning and in the evening, that's enough.

Do you limit the number of concurrent projects? No, dozens on the go all the time switching between them.

How do your breaks look like? Espresso.

If you cook at home are there tricks you use to optimize the time it takes? Batch cook is a must.

Where does family time, walking, chilling, working out fit in your day? After the school run, beach time with the kids and dogs.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Haha one day I will dedicate myself to woodwork when it's sunny outside.

I'm going to try batch cooking.

460 sats \ 0 replies \ @021da48107 17 May 2023

I am in the same boat. I actually started trying to use a physical kanban board I created in my office with cards for work and personal stuff. It hasn't stuck yet but it's an idea.

466 sats \ 4 replies \ @chrono 18 May 2023 freebie

I create a file called YYYY-MM-DD.txt at the start of each day.

In it, I write my daily tasks, takeaways from meetings I attended, people I spoke with, and everything I learned from that day. I store each file in a directory called notes.

When I need to find something, it's as easy as :

grep "thing" 2022-*

At the end of each year, I create a file called YYYY-summary.txt with important information that I want to carry over into the next year.

I've used this process for 15 years. It's simple, efficient, and, best of all, free.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Fantastic - if something simple works well enough no need to complicate it.

I got into the flow of using second-brain type apps and they're super useful without getting on my way: outlining, tagging, querying.

22 sats \ 2 replies \ @chrono 19 May 2023

"Second brain" apps are great, in theory, but one always runs into the issue of data ownership and product longevity. If all my notes are being dumped into Obsidian, for example, that information must be on their servers; I don't want that most of the time. Additionally, third-party apps are often resource heavy or were once free and, suddenly, require payment to use.

You mentioned outlining, tagging, and querying. While those aren't included in a plain-text file, org-mode in Emacs is as close as you can get in a plain-text format.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Agree! But

I use an open source app, data is encrypted on disk and never leaves my device (blocked all outgoing connections just in case).

I tried Emacs for org-mode a few years ago as it looked very cool from Youtube videos. Maybe I'm dumb but I found it terribly annoying, huge waste of time customizing it and felt like I needed a PhD to use Emacs shortcuts.

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @chrono 20 May 2023

Maybe I'm dumb but I found it terribly annoying, huge waste of time customizing it and felt like I needed a PhD to use Emacs shortcuts.

Learning and using Emacs is a time commitment that pays off the longer you use it. They don't call it an "editor for life" for nothing.

You're not dumb; Emacs has a steeper learning curve than vim. If you ever consider returning to Emacs, the best tutorial is building your own config (slowly) and practice using the keybindings and commands. It'll click eventually.

338 sats \ 1 reply \ @orthwyrm 18 May 2023

Man, people have all these elaborate plans... I just sort of turn up and avoid as many distractions (i.e. meetings) as possible. I work in software and need 3-4 hours of unbroken concentration to get anything decent done.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Yep, this is why I think I will have "themed" days where I exclusively focus 3-4 hours on one single project. Author of Deep Work says it's rare to find people doing deep work more than 3-4 hours a day

328 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatoshiNakanodo 17 May 2023

This is just how I do things; not advice...

I wear pretty much the same thing everyday.
I eat pretty much the same thing everyday. Maybe I'll eat out once or twice a week to mix things up.
I use my inbox as my punch list. If it's not in there, it doesn't exist.
I put my devices on DND during business hours and only check new messages at 3 points during the day (when I start my work day, after lunch, and an hour before I clock out) just to make sure I'm not missing something important. This frees me from most distractions.
I take frequent breaks as my brain requires them – this could be a stroll around the office/house, or 20 minutes of Stacker News, gaming, youtube or even work in the garden.
Once or twice a day I go for a 30-45 minute walk around the neighborhood. Usually in the morning before I do anything. But also if someone pisses me off.
My family... where the hell IS my family???

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap OP 19 May 2023

Definitely need to put devices on DND more. Maybe leave them in the bathroom and check every n breaks.

I go for a walk as soon as I wake up, pretty good way of starting the day! But I need timers for breaks, if I leave it up to my brain it will choose to keep going until it's fried

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 19 Feb

I’m a teacher. On a given day, I have to teach students for 3.5 hours and attend a meeting for another 2. That doesn’t leave me with much time for anything else. So my methodology is to complete one important task every day, come hell or high water haha

Erm I post and comment on SN intermittently throughout the day. Because I want to keep my cowboy hat. Also because I find that receiving sats for my written content helps me from feeling resentful about the things I don’t really wanna do at work xP