If what you're working on is important enough and you love it enough, you would never need this.
If not, then maybe you're working on the wrong thing.
Let's stop treating the effect of poor work habits and deal with the cause: find something better to work on.
[EDIT: I'd stay and reply to your great responses guys, but I'm not here anymore. As compelling as this discussion is, the real-time CRUD/robot interface I'm writing is way cooler.]
As anyone who's worked on anything for any period of time knows, "and then reality walked in."
We all want to believe that working on projects we love will keep us going nonstop for 18 hour days. Please, avoid the cognitive dissonance if you fail to live up to this unrealistic idealism, and give yourself just a modicum of slack. Don't burnout because of the unrealistic unbalanced life of the stereotypical startup guy you feel like you have to become.
If something's not working, catch yourself, correct, and move on. If it is working and you're working hard and moving forward despite your flawed humanity, then don't worry about it. No need to be overly critical or absolutist about it.
This is poor advice. First off not everyone has the opportunity to work on something important and that they love. Sure, it's ideal and probably a goal of everyone but sometimes it takes steps to attain that goal and sometimes people sacrifice their 8-5 hours to provide for their family.
Secondly, not everyone has the ability to get kickstarted each day to 100% productivity. You're very lucky if you do but I don't. I use Focus Booster and it helps but isn't a cure.
I had a response written out, but took a step back to see what other people had to say. You've pretty much summed up what I had to say in fewer words. I absolute deplore the parent comment, which is the typical response to these kinds of "hacks". While they're not ideal to actually solve the problem, they may mitigate the symptoms until they can solve the root cause. To each their own, and what works for one will not work for another. Keep on keeping on.
From the safety of my throwaway account, I have to ask a question of HN that's been bugging me for some time:
Am I the only person who, if not for the need to support my family, might blissfully while away his days playing games, playing with new tech, reading, watching TV or movies, and just generally goofing off? Maybe I'd regret my wasted life one day, but in the here and now there's a lot of fun to be had in the world today.
I love to code, but shipping is a lot harder, and running a whole business based on that code is harder still, of course. But from reading comments like the parent on HN, there are people who would make whole _products_, or build businesses all day long if left to their own devices.
I can't tell if I was just raised differently from other people such that I am predisposed to value, say, instant gratification and to avoid hard work; or if everyone else is just ignoring these parts of their nature and not talking about the fact that getting drunk with your friends is more fun and a lot easier than following through a product idea from concept to completion.
Since you have a family, it probably has been a while since you goofed off for an extended period. But for me it always gets old. There is only so much time I can spend doing nothing before I get hungry for something of substance.
Note that raising kids is a very substantial activity. I've taken the summer off to hang out with my brother and his family. Even a lot of the nominally fun time with kids means I'm helping educate, build character, and encourage good habits. So maybe the energy you would otherwise put into making a product is going into making a family.
I'd say you're confusing interest in your work and work ethic with ambition. They aren't the same thing.
Without ambition driving you, it's pretty difficult to motivate yourself past the point where the project you're working on stops being interesting, and just seems like a lot of work. That said, some people do seem to be able to make this initial phase last long enough to crank out impressive projects. Outside of that though, if you're happy with your life right now, you might just be running a little short on the motivation necessary to "build businesses all day long".
No doubt there's some truth here, but I would hesitate to write off the incredibly distracting and addicting power of the internet entirely. Even when I'm working on something I really enjoy, I find myself breaking to check HN, for example... The problem goes beyond motivation. Speaking only for myself, I'm so used to having my attention divided -- for example, watching TV while also surfing the internet -- that it's difficult to exclusively focus on anything.
This may often be true, but if you work on something that is closely tied to the flow of information on the internet then it's almost impossible not to get distracted by your own product. I've been working on a stream aggregation site for some time, and I can't tell you how many times I've caught myself using the product instead of testing it. It's entirely aggravating, but it has nothing to do with working on the right project or not loving it enough.
Imagine what the Reddit developers had to deal with.
I love what I work on, I also love knowledge. Turns out the internets isn't just a place where people go for the latest Success Kid meme or double rainbow video, it's a link to the entirety of all human knowledge.
Oh yeah, and it's a link to the people I love and care about as well...
I absolutely agree with this sentiment. However, my real goal for this project (apart from learning to code it) was to place a slight barrier between me and a bunch of mindless consumption. It's pretty easy to wake up in the morning, check email, check HN, etc.
I just wanted something to slow me down each morning and bring the focus back to producing. I also have it block me at about 6pm so I have to reflect on my day before going home and reading articles.
I have been trying to use tools (Stayfocusd, Rescuetime, /etc/hosts) to enforce self-control and discipline. Didn't work.
Realization - it seemed like trying to shut your eyes when there are lot of pretty girls in the town. It requires lot of mental training for self-control. Still trying.
If people only worked on truly important things, the world would be a better place. I love what I do, but my brain simply functions in a way that makes it difficult for me to focus. If I have to treat that by removing distractions from my periphery, that's not because I'm not working on something important or because I'm not working on something I love.
Do you have any evidence at all? Because history is filled with writers who get away from all the distractions so that writing is the only thing can to do.
Personally, I think you're confusing important with easy. When I find a video game I like, I can play it for hours. But that's because it has been optimized for playability. But when writing or coding, sometimes I get frustrated. What I'm going may be important, but it isn't always easy, and that's when distraction will strike.
> If what you're working on is important enough and you love it enough, you would never need this.
If what you're working on is important enough and you love it enough, you can afford a second desktop/laptop/tablet/smartphone that is designated "work only" and so offers fewer distractions than your primary device.
But how does that solve the 'internet distraction problem'? I would assume that you would still probably be connected to the internet on either device (most people use the internet for work purposes).
You know what works well? Just write some code. I use the metaphor "paint every day" which I took from a HN comment years ago, but how does an artist get good at painting? You paint every day.
How do you get stuff done? Code every day. Fix a small problem, big problem, whatever. Just take steps forward every day.
It's how I got http://reme.me off the ground. I do something every day. In a couple short months I built the API, site, iPhone, and Android apps all by myself. I only get an hour or two a day maybe to get stuff done, so I just try and do something.
Lately I've been giving myself a list of tasks and either a week or two deadline to hit a "release", but really, that doesn't get stuff done. Just coding something each day does.
I think you are missing the point of the OP's comment.
Essentially, he/she is saying that persistence is the key to completing the task, and that is true regardless of whether the task is enjoyable or not. Pound away, day after day, each and every day, and it will get done.
To clarify, ReMeme is a side project. None of it is my day job. My day job is a cool project, but it's by no means a startup. There is plenty of not fun work to do on it at times. Also, plenty of the things on ReMeme aren't that much fun either. The outcome is pretty cool, but building it is still work.
I think the context of this is related to working on "fun" problems though. If you're at work, getting paid and not working, you'll get fired. Working in a startup is much different.
However, adding a rewards/gamification system is not a bad idea at all. I like StayFocusd but I end up filling my time otherwise if I don't have a hard deadline. Having goals to reach is a great incentive, enough to keep me focused without a plugin. But the plugin provides a basic physical deterrent effect which sometimes alone can be enough
I've looked at many, many of these types of apps. Most are laughably easy to get around. Having one that only works on one type of browser when you have 4 different types is so easy to circumvent, it's not worth doing.
I find the whole "if you love it then you don't need this" sentiment at best naive, and at worst arrogant.
Sometimes we all have to do things we don't want to do. This includes, at times, working on your own project. There's nothing wrong with you, or what you're working on, if you actively try to limit your distractions.
If your project is so awesome you never get distracted, good for you. Kindly, take your hubris elsewhere.
I had to deal with shitty, shitty Internet once. I downloaded the docs ahead of time when I did have a good connection. Then when you're online later, what you still haven't figured out you attack.
It is not really that hard, I think it is just a culture shock for some to not have the Internet nearby. It was for me.
But sometimes completely unanticipated problems come up and you need stackoverflow... I'm not even sure how I did any work pre-internet. I know troubleshooting took me significantly longer back then, but I was also less experienced.
Currently you will have to open a different browser if you want to google something. I'm considering adding a blacklisting/whitelisting option but I was going for minimalism with v1.
I personally use the Chrome Nanny extension to block certain websites during specified hours. This goal-oriented approach is interesting though, as it seems to get at the core issue: "to create more than you consume".
I think that's a good observation about how this approach differs: it's not just a technical hack, but a behavioral one as well--the user experience with the tool is to simply do the warmups that they want to be doing anyway. I like that a lot, but it still feels like the tool is missing something to really successfully accomplish that.
I did this for a while but I just ended up editing my hosts file every time I wanted to stop working. Maybe I just need to practice more self discipline.
A workable substitute for self-discipline is to make it hard enough to do the bad thing that either your laziness or your better nature wins out.
E.g., I don't keep cookies in the house. Instead, I go to the store if I want some. It's pretty rare that I'll overcome my laziness enough to head out for them. And then on the way I often come to my senses.
In this case, I might make it harder to edit the hosts file. E.g., a daemon that puts the block back automatically unless I solve 25 captchas.
I also really like LeechBlock's option to insert a 30-second pause before viewing banned websites. Since it cancels the countdown if the window loses focus, I have to just sit and wait for half a minute. 90% of the time I'll say, "But I don't even want to look at Facebook now," close the window, and get back to what I want to be doing.
I have taken it to an extreme and got a dd-wrt router that easily blocks websites through both time of day and mac address. My wife is the one that knows the password.
I found that often it's just muscle memory for going to a particular time sink site, like when the project is being rebuilt for that 10 seconds, I would check out HN but got sucked in for much longer. The hosts file blocking just breaks that habit and forces me to focus back on the project.
I wrote a little shell script that makes it easy to manage host files for this very purpose. You can check it out here: https://github.com/theabraham/wrk
Lots of people commenting if your code is fun you shouldn't have to restrict yourself, blah blah blah. That's not the problem. The problem is how easy it is to instantly distract yourself. Taktaktaktaktak "Oh hey, I wonder if so-and-so replied on my Facebook, let's just to a quick look.." 5 hours later "Oh snap, the time just flew by!"
If you're serious about blocking yourself from parts of the Internet, do it comprehensively. Here's what I do.
Most of the advice on this page is blocking from the browser-level or OS-level. This is easy to bypass, and you have to configure every device. You need to work at the router-level.
Let's talk blocking. A complete blacklist is wrong, you still need some Internet to Google or ask for help. e.g. stackoverflow.com, etc. Similarly, whitelists don't work because you can't possibly list every site you may need access to -- you may not know they exist yet. You need a keyword-matching blacklist.
Vendor firmware usually has access restrictions, but they usually limit it to like 10 websites, and it usually doesn't have pattern-matching. You need a 3rd party firmware like Tomato.
Install the firmware per instructions from its website. It's really easy. The firmware has a page called "Access Restrictions". It does keyword blacklists/whitelists. You can block yourself for only certain hours of certain days. Here is an easy video tutorial from their website to guide you: http://www.polarcloud.com/v/screst.htm
For example, one keyword I use is "news". BAM! All URLs with the word "news" instantly blocked. Good. I don't need to be reading news when I should be coding. Resources like stackoverflow.com don't usually put "news" in their URLs, so they're safe.
There is the problem of unplugging the uplink from the router and directly into your computer (bypassing the router), or simply reconfiguring the router without restrictions. If you lack that much self-control, which I can understand (as I do too!!!), I recommend locking your router in a electrical enclosure and throwing away the key. Ok, not really. I made a cron job for the router that changes its login password to gibberish at some hour of the day, and X minutes prior it sets it to my normal password. Thus, I have X minutes of access to the router per day, should I need it.
A bit of a tangent but: I like Earnest Hemmingway's advice to only stop your work when you know exactly where to pick up again. I don't do great but when I follow the advice I find that it helps me get into flow more quickly.
"You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again."
Ok, now that I used this app I'm totally impressed. It even continues blocking after rebooting. Ha! Awesome.
I banged off almost 1000 words yesterday and had to shut down because of an oncoming storm. This morning I boot up and my connection is still locked up. My browser is saying I need to type another 1000 words if I want to get Internet. Nice.
This seems like it would be more of a hindrance than a help. Implementing anything to force yourself to code is a good indicator that you really don't want to code in the first place, and is just going to encourage you to write perfunctory code. It will probably also just make you more upset and contemptuous towards work in general. After all, who want's to be forced to something they don't want to do through negative reinforcement?
If you need this, there's most likely a bigger problem and you probably should be doing something else. Additionally, even if this gets the job done, it's going to piss you off to a large extent.
Lastly, this method is antithetical to coding in general. You most likely NEED the internet to code. Without things like Stack Overflow, you won't be able to solve problems as quickly and your productivity is going to go down.
> Implementing anything to force yourself to code is a good indicator that you really don't want to code in the first place, and is just going to encourage you to write perfunctory code.
The work I do is very boring. I do Drupal development for a series of television stations, and I'm not happy with it. But I need this job to pay the bills, so I have to perform well. Once I start coding, I realize my job isn't the worst thing in the world, and I'll get into a good flow. Starting, though, is the hardest part. These self-controlling applications help give me the start I need and don't let me give up so easily.
Everyone seems to be talking about the force-yourself-to-code part of this, but I recently read something about "write every morning" and as a tool for that this sounds appealing -- but only because my job is coding, not writing. Sort of like stretching before athletic activity, maybe?
The only thing that worries me is I have to inspect and trust the code to not do anything with potentially sensitive text. something local would be nice.
Do commitment devices like this actually work for anybody? I've never known anyone who struggled with procrastination or any other vices that prevent them from getting work done and had their problems solved by a tool like this.
The pomodoro technique seems like it would be more effective for motivating you to work since it immediately rewards your efforts with a short break from your tasks.
This is cool, nice job. I'm currently working on something similar: a Chrome extension to gamify internet self-control with a configurable mana bar. Tools that allow people to give themselves "bright lines" to guide their own behavior are a good thing.
I really enjoy eating, but if I'm caught up in something I don't always remember to do it. Sometimes I'll go hours past my regularly scheduled meal times. Then I'm sitting at my desk wondering (only for a short time) why my stomach hurts. Oh ya, food.
While this is a extreme example, the logic still applies to coding/writing or anything else. Sometimes the tasks you should do are side tracked by other tasks. And if you're deep in thought, you might not have the internal alarm to switch to something more of a priority. Hence external alarms.
In the process of eating you have access to many choices. You have good food, you have junk food, and you have bad food.
Some people lack self control and discipline so they end up eating more junk food and bad food than good.
Same goes for the process of productivity. You have work, distractions, and hinderances.
If this is what you need to build up a habit of self control, then good for you. If not whatever.
But it also somewhat true. If I love music I would be playing my guitar every single day. Being a rockstar is sometimes both incidental and consequential.
My example doesn't mention making a choice of what to eat, only becoming "aware" that one is hungry (needs to eat). The joy of eating (independent of choice) has little to do with recognizing that it's time to eat. Likewise, the joy or writing/programming has little to do with identifying and prioritizing those tasks efficiently.
I could have said it simpler by stating that one would be foolish to rely on emotions to schedule his/her day.
It's interesting you bring up food. Everything goes much more smoothly when I'm fasting: I'm way more focused, and the problems that do crop up, I feel I'm able to negotiate more effectively. I tend to look at it as a kind of perverse karmic trade-off, but that's just me...
Let me just counter that with my experience. I can focus better and I get things done much better when eat regulary and when I eat well (no fast food, not too much fat etc). If I eat to late or if I only eat a sandwich for breakfast the whole day can become ruined and if I completely skip a meal I'll be worse off for a day or two.
I experience this too. The period when I arrive at work before I've eaten anything is usually my most focused. I feel calm and I would describe my mind as "quiet". Once I eat, it's like everything gets noisy and I have a really difficult time concentrating for longer than about a minute on anything.
Coding or writing are not uniform tasks. There are ups and downs, parts that are tedious, parts that go smoothly, parts that will not budge one inch despite lots of time put in (bug hunting!). It's not all the same.
Building up on that, you can't control if the next task you have is going to be a tedious or smooth one. If you have a bug, or have to parse a CSV file in your assembly language program, then you just gotta do it. Sometimes there may be a way around it, but most often there isn't. Otherwise, you'd be able to circumvent the whole task in the first place.
You might think you like all ice cream, until someone hands you some anchovies ice cream or something.
No matter how fulfilling or worthwhile something is, there will always be tedious parts. Always.
It's a refusal to accept this that prevents people from completing tasks -- they hit the inevitable wave of tedium, and they can't grind through it, because they assume anything that's truly edifying will be tedium-free. That's a really dangerous belief.
Now if something is all tedium, then I agree, find something else to do. But there is no project on Earth that won't have frustrating patches where your mind will try to wander.
I don't think it's about liking or not liking writing or coding. It's easy to start the day with checking email, reading HN or other less productive tasks. It's just something to help you start your day Hemingway style -- writing (or coding) every morning without distractions.
I'm a software dev but my favorite thing to do in the world is fish. Last month I took a vacation to the Caribbeans, which has some amazing surf fishing. My goal was to get up and fish every sunrise. I did this for 4 or 5 days but ended up sleeping in a few days because, after all, sleeping is fun and fishing can wait.
I do really like fishing and had a goal to do it each day but failed. I'm guessing you think I don't really like fishing after all?
I agree with you. I've been listening to Merlin Mann's podcast Back To Work and he talks a lot about things like this and things like "distraction-free writing environments". His philosophy (that I tend to agree with) is that if these tools work for you - great. But you might be solving the wrong problem. Procrastination might be your brain telling you something about the task you're putting off doing.
I expected something interesting or insightful from your link, but it just completely seems to sidestep the idea that procrastination exists.
The Wikipedia definition is "act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time".
This clearly exists, and completely disavowing it with some (semi)feel good idea about how you aren't caring enough, implicitly linking it to low willpower is way too simplistic - and totally not insightful.
My own experience has been that even when I know that the task needs to get done, even when it is enjoyable, it can be hard to get started.
Once started, everything flows as you might expect, as the author says "How many things do I need to shed ... with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love?"
The post also neatly sidesteps the idea that even if you do not care, you may need to get things done.
The attitude probably appeals to some libertarian philosophy/Protestant work ethic, but even those people will freely admit that doing beats wanting to do something -- it's the doing that counts.
If people cannot get themselves to do something, even if they want and care to do it, telling people to care more isn't very helpful, especially when pooh-poohing the very things that work for some people to do what they want to do!
"If that sounds fancy and oversimplified, then you "care" about too many things. Period."
What if you really do not "care" about the things that you are doing while procrastinating? What if you are simply avoiding the anxiety of starting to do what you care about?
There are serious psychological questions here, and this blog post just ignores them all.
Part of it might be a confusion of terms. I would argue that if you really wanted to do something you'd be doing it or it would already be done (by definition of the word "want"). Same with "care". The very first episode of the podcast I listened to was Merlin and his co-host discussing the word "priority". He was giving a talk at a company and someone in the crowd claimed to have "27 high-priority items" which Merlin thought was completely insane. He says you can tell something is a priority in one of two ways: you're doing it or it's done. Calling something a priority when it's not obscures the real problem. I think it's the same here. Calling something a thing you care about but never do doesn't solve anything.
I wrote down Merlin's definition of procrastination: procrastination is what happens when you temporarily forget who you are, what you should pay attention to, and what your options are for doing something about it.
Do you need an alarm to remind yourself to play video games? Do you need a "distraction-free gaming environment"?
>Do you need an alarm to remind yourself to play video games? Do you need a "distraction-free gaming environment"?
I rarely play video games, so that isn't the greatest example for me.
I'll present an analogy, though.
One of the long standing examples given of whether knowledge actually applies to actions is smoking. I think we all know that smoking can cause cancer, reduces lifespan, and causes various diseases.
Except that you can invariably see doctors smoking outside of hospitals, even oncologists!
Just saying that outcomes are the only thing that matters to make an evaluation of whether you care about something, or consider something a priority doesn't explain why we can have cognitive dissonance about them.
Your (and the author's) assertions are almost laughably behaviorist, completely neglecting any idea that people have minds and you are effectively arguing that people are reducible solely to action-machines.
We know better than that, unless you really think that the mind has no meaning, or that we are somehow rational machines - in which case, why the obsession with "caring" (which is clearly more emotional than rational)?
Basically, if the only way we can judge that we "care" about something is exhibiting behaviors that show we care, using these tools will exhibit that same behavior -- in which case, what does caring have to do with it?
Really, there is even more wrong with this post than I thought at first blush, and further analysis seems to reveal even more flaws with the thinking.
Per usual on HN, I think people take simple, fun utilities like this way too serious and try inject some philosophical ideal about loving your work blah blah blah. They dont get it. I like it. Good job.
My email address is longer then 30 characters so I had to use javascript to input it. Still doesn't look like it worked though not sure if your no longer accepting new users or if my hack didnt work.
If you had contact info in your profile I'd send you this privately, but that's exactly what we've built with https://monotask.com. The pro version is free for another few days. Free version will be free forever.
Not trying to threadjack, so if anybody has questions, etc., would love for you to e-mail me directly at [email protected].
Sorry about that. Yes. We're working on a Linux version, but wanted to iron out some kinks in the other two first. If you e-mail me, I'll let you know as soon as we have something for you. I'll update that copy on the site, too.
We'll be charging for the pro version, but if you (or any other HN users) grab the pro version now and e-mail me [[email protected]], I'll comp your account through August.
a long time ago, I've stopped using and finding productivity app like this. Just look around when I really have free time.
Instead of playing around with this, completing the most important things, others tasks will take care of themselves.
what if i need to search for a solution to something or find out if it's a bug in IDE or it's me doing something wrong? doesn't seems like a very good idea to me personally. just learning to focus on your target would probably help more
If not, then maybe you're working on the wrong thing.
Let's stop treating the effect of poor work habits and deal with the cause: find something better to work on.
[EDIT: I'd stay and reply to your great responses guys, but I'm not here anymore. As compelling as this discussion is, the real-time CRUD/robot interface I'm writing is way cooler.]