Some jobs have very clear lines between when you’re “on” and when you’re “off” while in others the lines are blurred — or potentially nonexistent. That makes not being distracted by work, especially mentally, a major challenge. But you can reduce how distracted you feel by work during times when you’re not working. First, define what “after hours” means for you, considering personal commitments like your commute and family obligations. Next, have mental clarity about what needs to get done and when you will do it. Then, communicate with your colleagues about how (or if) you want to be contacted in your off hours. Finally, do your work at work. If you must bring it home with you, define select hours to work, and don’t let yourself think of work outside of that time period.
It's getting harder to focus every day
I’m feeling it right now. I had to set a timer for 15 minute on my computer and block all distractions to write this. If I didn’t force myself to focus I would easily get distracted by something after few minutes. Even when I’m doing things that I’ve been waiting to do it, I still feel the urge to do something else. I don’t know how and when this happened. During the last few years I was always studying, working, and doing open source. And actually got stuff done. Doing all of those at the same time requires paying attention to what I wanted to do and ignore the noise.
Less stress, more productivity: why working fewer hours is better for you and your employer
There’s always too much work to be done on software projects, too many features to implement, too many bugs to fix. Some days you’re just not going through the backlog fast enough, you’re not producing enough code, and it’s taking too long to fix a seemingly-impossible bug. And to make things worse you’re wasting time in pointless meetings instead of getting work done. Once it gets bad enough you can find yourself always scrambling, working overtime just to keep up. Pretty soon it’s just expected, and you need to be available to answer emails at all hours even when there are no emergencies. You’re tired and burnt out and there’s still just as much work as before. The real solution is not working even harder or even longer, but rather the complete opposite: working fewer hours.
Live asynchronously.
Last year I turned off all my notifications. I stopped booking meetings. I started living asynchronously. Now instead of being interrupted throughout the day — or rushing from one meeting to the next — I sit down and get work done. I work a lot. I co...
Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday | plumshell
I am an indie iPhone developer, and I've been working for 3 hours everyday for almost 2 years now. It may not work for everybody, but I started this habit in early 2014, and I have continued to do it since have I found that this is the most productive way to work for me.
Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible - …
I combed through several years of my private notes and through everything I published on productivity before and tried to summarize all of it in this post. If you’re unproductive right now Here’s what you should do if you’ve been procrastinating for an entire day: Accept that you won’t do anything today and try not to get angry at yourself Set the alarm for the time you will be preparing to go to bed today No, really. Do it. It will take 20 seconds Procrastinate for the …
Don't Get Distracted
I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.
Why It's So Hard to Focus at Work (Hint: It's not you, it's your workplace)
The workplace is overloaded with distractions. Here's why (and how) companies should protrect their most important asset – their team's attention.
If you don’t finish then you’re just busy, not productive – Jack Simpson
One of the biggest realisations I’ve come to as part of my PhD, is how little people care about how I spend my time, they only care about what I am able to deliver. Yet in order to deliver, you need to finish. I was recently reading an article on this topic, and I think the advice can be best summed up as:
How to be more productive without forcing yourself
Imagine you could work more and be wildly productive. And you wouldn’t need to force yourself to work.
Doing nothing at work
Many engineers should be doing less work. I don’t necessarily mean producing less code or fewer changes, but literally working fewer hours in the day. When they do work, they should be working at a slower pace. I like to aim to be running at 80% utilization by default: unless I have a high-pressure project going on, I spend 20% of my workday away from the computer.
The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world
We check our phones every 12 minutes, often just after waking up. Always-on behaviour is harmful to long-term mental health, and we need to learn to the hit the pause button
Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus
Research has shed light on the power of focus and its role as a hidden driver of success. Yet as helpful as focus can be, research also shows there’s a downside to it: excessive focus exhausts the focus circuits in your brain. It can drain your energy, make you lose self-control, impair your decision-making, and make you less collaborative. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus. When you unfocus, you engage a brain circuit called the default mode network (DMN). The DMN activates old memories, goes back and forth between the past, present, and future, and recombines different ideas. Using this new and previously inaccessible data, you can imagine creative solutions or predict the future, and more. There are many simple and effective ways to activate this circuit in the course of a day, such as positive constructive daydreaming, napping, and consciously thinking from another person’s perspective.
Is full-time work bad for our brains?
If you’re over 40, working more than 25 hours a week could be affecting your intelligence, new research suggests
Always be quitting - Julio Merino (jmmv.dev)
A good philosophy to live by at work is to “always be quitting”. No, don’t be constantly thinking of leaving your job 😱. But act as if you might leave on short notice 😎. …
How to balance full-time work with creative projects – The Creative Independent
A guide to finding the right day job, protecting your time, and building creative habits by Jeffrey Silverstein. Illustrated by Sunny Eckerle.
Opinion | 5-Hour Workdays? 4-Day Workweeks? Yes, Please (Published 2019)
Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope.
