I am not hard working, but I had bursts of working significantly harder than usual.
Not sure how much you can benefit from my example, because I suspect that people are quite different about these things. Things that other people report working for them, or things that people use to make other people work harder, often fail completely for me.
Things that work for me:
autonomy
removing other obstacles and distractions from my life
do not interrupt me after I have started working
someone friendly I can talk to about the project
Things that “should” work for me, but actually don’t:
external threats (they kinda work now, but it is a loan from tomorrow’s work)
motivational speeches and platitudes
pomodoro, beeminder, web blockers
giving myself chocolate as a reward
Seems like the common theme is that external motivation does not work for me, internal motivation does, and social motivation does too if I perceive it as coming from an aligned source (but not when it is obvious manipulation or a kind of threat).
In general I procrastinate a lot with starting the work, but once I start, it feels like I could work endlessly unless I am interrupted. (When I was single and childless, I could spend an entire weekend working on my project, interrupted only by food and sleep. That kind of interruption is not a problem. Problem is the kind of interruption that requires me to solve some other problem.) Once I am interrupted, it is difficult to start again. If I am interrupted repeatedly, I begin expecting to be interrupted again, which makes it even more difficult to start.
On the dimension of “alone—not alone”, I work best when you leave me alone when I need it, and provide me company when I need it. (If you had a group of people like me, a good workplace would be a small private quiet room for everyone, and a larger common room to take breaks and talk about work to each other.)
Giving myself rewards fails completely, because the reward becomes yet another thing that distracts me. (Now I have two jobs: the original job, and rationing the rewards.) I work better when I forget about possible rewards and just focus on the work. Similarly, pomodoro, beeminder, or web blockers annoy me, and then I cannot focus on my work over how annoyed I am.
EDIT: Keeping written notes makes it easier to continue the next day. Actually, even if I am going to do it right now, I sometimes write the outline first.
I need to distinguish: To-do lists, in the sense of “dozen unrelated tasks that I should all do today” do not work for me (the problem is finding the energy to actually do it), but project-oriented lists “dozen things I want to do on this specific project” are useful. (Intuitively, the “daily to-do list” is like my boss, the “project to-do” is like a colleague.)
I am not hard working, but I had bursts of working significantly harder than usual.
Not sure how much you can benefit from my example, because I suspect that people are quite different about these things. Things that other people report working for them, or things that people use to make other people work harder, often fail completely for me.
Things that work for me:
autonomy
removing other obstacles and distractions from my life
do not interrupt me after I have started working
someone friendly I can talk to about the project
Things that “should” work for me, but actually don’t:
external threats (they kinda work now, but it is a loan from tomorrow’s work)
motivational speeches and platitudes
pomodoro, beeminder, web blockers
giving myself chocolate as a reward
Seems like the common theme is that external motivation does not work for me, internal motivation does, and social motivation does too if I perceive it as coming from an aligned source (but not when it is obvious manipulation or a kind of threat).
In general I procrastinate a lot with starting the work, but once I start, it feels like I could work endlessly unless I am interrupted. (When I was single and childless, I could spend an entire weekend working on my project, interrupted only by food and sleep. That kind of interruption is not a problem. Problem is the kind of interruption that requires me to solve some other problem.) Once I am interrupted, it is difficult to start again. If I am interrupted repeatedly, I begin expecting to be interrupted again, which makes it even more difficult to start.
On the dimension of “alone—not alone”, I work best when you leave me alone when I need it, and provide me company when I need it. (If you had a group of people like me, a good workplace would be a small private quiet room for everyone, and a larger common room to take breaks and talk about work to each other.)
Giving myself rewards fails completely, because the reward becomes yet another thing that distracts me. (Now I have two jobs: the original job, and rationing the rewards.) I work better when I forget about possible rewards and just focus on the work. Similarly, pomodoro, beeminder, or web blockers annoy me, and then I cannot focus on my work over how annoyed I am.
EDIT: Keeping written notes makes it easier to continue the next day. Actually, even if I am going to do it right now, I sometimes write the outline first.
I need to distinguish: To-do lists, in the sense of “dozen unrelated tasks that I should all do today” do not work for me (the problem is finding the energy to actually do it), but project-oriented lists “dozen things I want to do on this specific project” are useful. (Intuitively, the “daily to-do list” is like my boss, the “project to-do” is like a colleague.)