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/ .
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.
What a bunch of ****es on here. Here we have someone asking for help in staying on task using computer, which DO cause attention deficit, and every post chastizes him.
There is a real issue here - I've done it myself. Wandering the Internet almost subconsciously as an alternative to doing work. The brain, after millions of years of training to seek stimulating things, is raising stimulating things to the top of awareness. The dog with the fluffy tail in a YouTube video is far more interesting than row 15 of a financial spreadsheet.
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 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.
part of being older is the realization that all this "work is more important than ..." talk was bullshit and that you should have enjoyed your life and family instead.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
sane people act like they are not in control of their own behavior.
It is true. Don't pretend you are in control of yourself at all times. While, for now, it is considered the normal thing to do, being a control freak is only being stubborn for the sake of a cultural norm. You see people go slightly over speed limits all the time, you see them smoking, drinking, lying, procrastinating, cheating, jaywalking, ..
Are _you_ not overweight, speeding, smoking, drinking, lying bastard yourself? Good, I'm real happy for you and imma let you finish but realise that ain't the norm and it ain't realistic to expect people be robots. Flogging oneself for being human is stupid when there could be technical help to overcome that and turn him into the happy-consumer-busy-worker-bee the society expects from us. That is, if one wants to succumb to such a role.