Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Software To Help Stay On Task?
GiboNZ writes "Like many others, I easily get distracted when working on a computer. Say I work on a task — be it a programming job or bookkeeping or whatever — and need to quickly check something on Google. Unfortunately after a while I often find myself on Slashdot or eBay or reading emails instead of continuing with the job I was doing before. Maybe if I had a 'single-tasking desktop' it wouldn't be such an issue. I couldn't Alt-Tab to my email client with tempting 200 unread emails, Alt-Tab to browser with 10 tabs open for later, Alt-Tab to unfinished document from yesterday, Alt-Tab to ... you know what I mean. I want to be forced by some technical means to work on the problem I should work on. Will alone doesn't work — I tried. Like when mowing a lawn — there I've got nothing else to do and I keep mowing until it's finished. If I could multitask in the same way I can on a computer our little backyard would take me the whole day to do. Any ideas how to inhibit the distractions ever present on modern multi-tasking internet-connected desktops? I genuinely want to be more productive but the technology is against me."
Like it or not, you are only productive 20% of the time. It doesn't matter how your work pattern is. So even if you had a single-tasking UI and only kept your main task window open, you still couldn't reach more then 20%.
You should instead concentrate on being ultimately efficient in that 20%. That's the secret. Sometimes, bright ideas on how to achieve this come to you in the remaining 80% while you think you are not working...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Personal_life
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Your mind contains a sophisticated goal setting mechanism (among other features).
To activate it, write down your goals for the day. If it's important to do X hours of work on a particular task, write that down.
It's important to write it out longhand - don't type it. No one knows why this is, but I suspect that writing things out longhand rehearses the goal in several sensory modes: you're speaking the words as you write, you're feeling the words as you write, and you're seeing the words as you write.
Goals should be present, positive, personal, and measurable.
Positive: positive logic. You can't say "I stop doing XXX" because the goal mechanism is a lower-order mechanism and can't do logical negatives. Say "I *do* xxx" instead.
Personal: Start the goal with "I", as in "I complete X hours of work".
Present: Phrase the goal in the present tense, as if you've already accomplished it. "Today I *do* X hours of work on XXX".
Measurable: Some way to determine that you're making progress. Writing "I purchase a new car" is less effective than "I set aside XXX dollars towards purchasing a car".
Tape the written goal to your screen and occasionally glance at it as you're working.
This works for all types of goals - short and long term. So long as they're doable and reasonable, writing them down engages your mental systems to make the outcome happen.
I keep a tall can of Arizona Green Tea with Ginseng and Honey (cold tea, $0.99 each at the grocery store, and they are tall cans 695mL each). I take a sip every few minutes, as one does when one has a drink nearby.
The result is two-fold. First, instead of alt-tabbing away during natural cagnitive breaks, I wind up taking a sip. That sip ends in five seconds, and I'm faced with the same screen, so I resume the same work. More importantly, very soon my bladder fills up. Turns out that with a full bladder, I push to get one-more-task done before getting up to go to the bathroom.
The task itself distracts me from the bladder issue, and I wind up on the next task. Then the bladder issue distracts me from the alt-tabbing. Then the task distracts me from the bladder. Then the bladder distracts me from the alt-tabbing. It's circular, and it lasts until the work is done or I really can't sit anymore and the bladder takes over.
One ninety-nine cent can of this fairly healthy tea tends to get me a good three to five hours no matter what.