(Mostly) giving up caffeine. 7 points, ~5 years. Much easier to get up in the morning. I have a single cup of tea maybe once or twice a month if I feel like I need waking up more, and that’s enough to do the job now. Best used in combination with another elite lifehack, highly recommended if you can manage it:
Getting enough sleep. 7 points, ~5 years.
Pomodoros. 8 points, ~9 months. Really excellent and not sure why I resisted the idea so long. Turns out lots of half hour blocks really add up, and it’s significantly changed how I work. This is a relatively recent thing so probably still overexcited about it.
Keeping my desk clear of paper. 6 points, ~2 years. I used to be awful at having stuff piled up everywhere, which would put me off working at home and convince me that I had to go to a library or something. This works by having box files so that the paper never ends up there in the first place.
Lot of calendar reminder email alerts. 4 points, ~3 years. Not exactly life-changing but I have fewer birthday present buying panics.
Todoist. 3 points, ~9 months. It has Gmail integration so I do check it, and it sort of works, but gets clogged with stale stuff too easily. I generally find todo lists hard though so this is good by my standards.
Beeminder. 5 points (but hard to attach a single number to), used for ~4 months 2 years ago and then stopped. Extremely effective way to simulate the stress of having a lot of external deadlines. It worked brilliantly on a time-sensitive project I had, but too stress-inducing for me to want to use permanently. It did do an excellent job of reminding me what being a productive person felt like, and I’d use it again if I really needed to, but mostly it just made me realise I needed to get my internal motivation working better.
Leechblock type browser extensions. 4 points, used them on and off for ~4 years up to about two years ago. I think the one I liked most was called Crackbook, which added a delay to the page load time instead of outright blocking it. They tend to work OK until they don’t. There’s no particular reason I stopped using them, except that the problem doesn’t seem so urgent now I have a normal full time job and value my free time a bit more.
Cool, I like these sorts of lists! Here’s mine:
(Mostly) giving up caffeine. 7 points, ~5 years. Much easier to get up in the morning. I have a single cup of tea maybe once or twice a month if I feel like I need waking up more, and that’s enough to do the job now. Best used in combination with another elite lifehack, highly recommended if you can manage it:
Getting enough sleep. 7 points, ~5 years.
Pomodoros. 8 points, ~9 months. Really excellent and not sure why I resisted the idea so long. Turns out lots of half hour blocks really add up, and it’s significantly changed how I work. This is a relatively recent thing so probably still overexcited about it.
Keeping my desk clear of paper. 6 points, ~2 years. I used to be awful at having stuff piled up everywhere, which would put me off working at home and convince me that I had to go to a library or something. This works by having box files so that the paper never ends up there in the first place.
Lot of calendar reminder email alerts. 4 points, ~3 years. Not exactly life-changing but I have fewer birthday present buying panics.
Todoist. 3 points, ~9 months. It has Gmail integration so I do check it, and it sort of works, but gets clogged with stale stuff too easily. I generally find todo lists hard though so this is good by my standards.
Beeminder. 5 points (but hard to attach a single number to), used for ~4 months 2 years ago and then stopped. Extremely effective way to simulate the stress of having a lot of external deadlines. It worked brilliantly on a time-sensitive project I had, but too stress-inducing for me to want to use permanently. It did do an excellent job of reminding me what being a productive person felt like, and I’d use it again if I really needed to, but mostly it just made me realise I needed to get my internal motivation working better.
Leechblock type browser extensions. 4 points, used them on and off for ~4 years up to about two years ago. I think the one I liked most was called Crackbook, which added a delay to the page load time instead of outright blocking it. They tend to work OK until they don’t. There’s no particular reason I stopped using them, except that the problem doesn’t seem so urgent now I have a normal full time job and value my free time a bit more.