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."
Turn your wifi connection off. After the first few 404's you'll be surprised as how much work you'll get done.
You can't magically change your behavior and habits with a piece of software.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Your subsequent unemployment will motivate you to stay on task.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
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.
Stop it or I'll bury you alive in a box!
(I don't make change.)
I second (third, fourth, whatever) the Pomodoro idea. Why? Because there's a built-in reward. You can go do all that goof-off stuff that brings you instant gratification, but you do it for limited, specific times. Building that kind of discipline is easier and more likely to succeed than trying to go cold turkey. 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off; longer breaks after longer periods. Funny how it works. You start to see that you're making progress and you work longer or cut the breaks shorter. Definitely positive feedback in the loop.
Schedule more meetings.
There's an entry in there that looks something like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost loopback
Change it so it looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost loopback slashdot.org
#DeleteChrome
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/strict-pomodoro/cgmnfnmlficgeijcalkgnnkigkefkbhd?hl=en If you don't know what Pomodoro is, check it out - it's exactly for this problem. This helps me a lot.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
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.
I speak from experience. Think back to those sessions where you busted your balls for who knows how long, not even stopping for a drink or potty break. You did it because it was interesting stuff, a unique challenge, right? Now, contrast that with your day to day work. Either find the discipline to deal with the boredom, or find a way to make your tasks less boring.
Depending on your reasons for distraction, you could try delaying the distraction. So you want to check emails or facebook or something, do it in 5 minutes instead of now. Then in 5 minutes review your impulsive decision and see if you can delay the distraction any further.
:)
Failing that, get yourself a desk with a screen that can easily be seen by others. I'm assuming you work in an office or something here... if you are working from home then your employer has made a foolish decision (self employed or not
As with many human problems a technical solution isn't always best. The real underlying issue is that our brains are built according to a fundamentally parallel architecture which isn't very well understood. Your consciousness is something like a "software" trick that gives you the illusion of serial operations. You can focus the spotlight of attention on one thing at a time but you're never really doing that, it's just a simulation. Classical computers are the complete opposite--though in modern times we do now have truly parallel CPUs. It's not just technology that's against you, you're working against the nature of your brain.
Your problem is that you are trying to force your brain to function in a way that it is antithetical to its design on a fundamental level. Doing this for too long causes real and measurable fatigue. If you are finding yourself overstressed from the demand of focusing too intensely on a task you should change your workflow. I would suggest breaking up your time into smaller chunks, maybe of 15-20 minutes so that you are not focused on any one thing for too long. Not every task is amenable to this procedure, so there's going to be time when you simply have to endure.
You can also set achievable goals and have some sort of metric for measuring and verifying them. Write down that you'll answer X number of E-mails or spend 15 minutes doing that twice a day. Write down a schedule and tape it to your computer screen.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
This is called chronic media multitasking, and you are not alone (likely a large portion of those calling you a loser and telling you to get over it are avoiding doing something more important). http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2009/08/24/chronic-media-multi-tasking-makes-it-harder-to A single-tasking environment would be helpful, but at what cost? While it isn't good to read your e-mail and surf the net while you are trying to get something done, it IS often useful to look up that related e-mail or useful reference. You might use some measure to block the websites you abuse the most, but who is to say something else won't take their place? What worked for me was simply to recognize and study the problem. Once you see what a common occurrence it is, and how it affects your ability to function even after the fact, it should make it easier to prioritize fixing it. For me that meant hiding most Skype notifications, closing my e-mail client while I worked, and closing out programs that I didn't need for the current task. Your mileage may vary; this is what worked (very well) for me.
You are thief. If I pay you an hourly wage and you goof off (...) because they are committed and work very hard to make sure all goals are achieved and not quit at 5:01.
Ah, the perfect american style of management, I own you every second of work and if you go home at 5 PM sharp despite working all day then I'm still a bad employee because it's my fault that your ridiculous goals aren't met. I'm so glad I don't live in the US, either you can pay me by the hour and if you want me to work overtime you can pay me time and a half, or you can pay me for performance and butt out of my time management. You want performance even though I'm on the clock? Then give me a performance bonus or I'll be just as slow as the guy in the next cubicle who does less and is paid the same, I'm not particularly interested in your management positions and with enough years of experience on my resume I can probably get a suitably senior position at some other company anyway. The whole "work hard now and be rewarded later" is for young naive fools.
Oh yes and I've worked a bit with Indians, not Chinese though and while some of them are very bright many of them have simply perfected the technique of looking busy. Much like the Americans who stay 10-12 hours at work to show how much work they're doing it's mostly for show, I'm not worried anyone will replace me on actual performance and luckily there's companies that care more about that than showmanship. But I guess in this respect US managers and Indians catering to US management style deserve each other. Now I try not to really goof off at work but sometimes I've found it effective to take a five minute distraction when I feel heavy-headed and that I'm not really finding the best solutions instead of working two hours on a design only to find out it wasn't all that smart. Many not so great choices now have so much piled on top they'll never be undone.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, if you can hold your attention on a single task for a short amount of time then I would try the Pomodoro Technique. I had issues similar to what you describe and this has helped me a great deal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique Briefly: you pick a task, set the timer (the recommended time is 25 minutes), focus on that one thing, and then reward yourself with a five minute break. Reset timer, repeat. It can become game like, challenging yourself to stay on task until you get to the chime, and the 25 minute boundary seems like the right level of challenge versus attainability. Lots of free software/apps out there to help you with it.