This is basically Allen’s “Getting things done” 2-min method, I think. Just doing very short tasks right away to clear away the (mental) clutter. I think it’s a good idea to practice this, but I also think that the opposite is also good, i.e. ignoring the small things and focusing all time and energy on one big thing, first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, that way, you will do your thing, but ignoring small tasks will also lead to a dirty apartment, eating crap and not practicing the guitar… So I think, for me personally, every morning has to be one big thing, with Yoda timers sprinkled throughout the rest of the day.
Adding to Qiaochu’s point, Yoda Timers scale to pretty much any difficulty. There’s a vast generalization which really works for me of the form: “take any given thing, imagine (inside view) the shortest possible time span in which a human being could do it, and set a timer to do it in that time.” You might say Hammertime is me setting myself a 30-day timer to solve instrumental rationality.
Resolve Cycles has a somewhat different flavor. One thing we emphasize in the CFAR class is that you’ll be surprised at the kinds of things you can get done in 5 minutes; you can just try to e.g. solve a bug, even a pretty big-looking bug, with a concerted 5 minutes of effort. We tell a nice story about a participant whose bug was “I don’t have a job” and who in fact successfully acquired a job in 5 minutes (he called a friend).
This is basically Allen’s “Getting things done” 2-min method, I think. Just doing very short tasks right away to clear away the (mental) clutter. I think it’s a good idea to practice this, but I also think that the opposite is also good, i.e. ignoring the small things and focusing all time and energy on one big thing, first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, that way, you will do your thing, but ignoring small tasks will also lead to a dirty apartment, eating crap and not practicing the guitar… So I think, for me personally, every morning has to be one big thing, with Yoda timers sprinkled throughout the rest of the day.
Adding to Qiaochu’s point, Yoda Timers scale to pretty much any difficulty. There’s a vast generalization which really works for me of the form: “take any given thing, imagine (inside view) the shortest possible time span in which a human being could do it, and set a timer to do it in that time.” You might say Hammertime is me setting myself a 30-day timer to solve instrumental rationality.
Resolve Cycles has a somewhat different flavor. One thing we emphasize in the CFAR class is that you’ll be surprised at the kinds of things you can get done in 5 minutes; you can just try to e.g. solve a bug, even a pretty big-looking bug, with a concerted 5 minutes of effort. We tell a nice story about a participant whose bug was “I don’t have a job” and who in fact successfully acquired a job in 5 minutes (he called a friend).