About the Author: Aaron Schwartz is an American Internet activist, programmer, writer, hacktivist. Died for freedom of information.
- At the age of 12, he created the Info website, where everyone could write about what they know (and others could add and comment). It was the forerunner of Wikipedia.
- At the age of 14, Schwartz co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification.
- Aaron Schwartz worked under the leadership of Tim Berners-Lee on the core RDF working group at the W3C.
- I got on the first program at Y Combinator with a startup Infogami, which later merged with the popular site Reddit.
- Open Library Creative Commons
- Markdown.
“During this time that you have been watching TV,” they say to me, “you would have already written a new story”. It's hard to disagree with this - writing a story is, of course, a better use of free time than watching a TV show - but it's not so simple, because this means that watching TV and writing a story are equivalent things, which, unfortunately, is not always like that.
Time has varying degrees of quality. If I'm on the subway and find that I forgot my laptop, then a couple of paragraphs is all I can squeeze. It is also difficult to concentrate when you are constantly being jerked. Well, the psychological moment - sometimes you are elated, full of motivation and willingness to work on something, and sometimes you feel such irritation and fatigue that you cannot do anything but stare at the TV.
If you, nevertheless, want to increase your productivity, you must be clearly aware of such things and be able to cope with them. First, your goal is to get the most out of each time slot. Secondly, you should try to improve the quality of your time.
Spend your time efficiently.
Choose good problems
Life is short (anyway, I was told so), so why waste it doing nonsense? Everyone can do something just because it is easy and simple, but you should always be careful in this matter: is there something that is much more important? Why did you start doing this in the first place? It is difficult to answer such questions (in the end this rule will lead you to the question “why am I not solving the most important problems in the world?”), But believe me, every small step in this direction will make you more effective.
It is clear that you are not obliged to solve problems of a universal scale all the time. Personally, I certainly do not do that (at the moment I am writing this note), but it is the yardstick that helps me evaluate my life.
Have them in stock
Another common myth is that you have to pick one problem and focus on it only. It seems to me that this is a little strained. For example, right now I’m following my posture, pulling a dumbbell, drinking, cleaning the table, chatting with my brother, and writing this post. During the day, I will have time to work on this article, read a book, eat, answer a few emails, chat with friends, go to the store, edit a couple more articles, back up the contents of my hard drive, and fix my list of books. Last week I worked on a few IT projects, read a few books, took the time to learn a couple of programming languages, rearranged it, and so on.
When there are multiple tasks available, there is always something to do at any given time of any quality. Plus, if things get stuck or get bored, you can tackle something else (which will give you time to tune in to the original problem).
In doing so, you become a more creative person. Creativity is that the lessons learned from some projects can be applied to others. If you have a lot of tasks, good and different, then later you will have a lot of ideas in your arsenal.
Make a list
Defining the scope of tasks is usually not difficult - most people have a ton of things to do. But keeping all of them in your head is often an impossible task. The psychological pressure of remembering all this will drive anyone crazy. The solution is simple: write them down.
With this list of tasks, you can start sorting them by type. For example, my list includes programming, writing articles, thinking, doing household chores, reading, listening, and viewing tapes (in that order).
The most important projects involve a range of similar tasks. While writing this article, I also needed to read about other similar techniques, think about organizing the article, do some proofreading, discuss it with other people, etc. - and all this as an addition to the actual writing of the text. Each task is of a specific type, so you can start doing it as soon as the time is right.
Make it a part of your life
You already have a list - now you can start looking at it in order to recall what needs to be done. The best way to train yourself to look at this list is to make sure it catches your eye. For example, on my desk there is a whole stack of books, and on top are those that I am currently reading. When I need to read, I just grab the topmost book.
The situation is the same with films. When a movie appears that I absolutely must watch, I put it in a special folder on my computer. And every time I want to watch a movie, I just open this folder.
Moreover, I even think about how to do it more obtrusively. For example, having a web page pops up with a list of must-read articles as soon as I start browsing blogs. Or even better - a pop-up window with suggestions for something to do, whenever I am sitting around.
Improve the quality of your time.
Using the allotted time to the fullest will already allow you to achieve more. The more important task is to improve the quality of time. Many people's lives are filled with things like school or work. Of course, doing these things, you temporarily stop doing others. What else can you do?
Reduce physical limitations
Carry a pen and paper with you
Almost all prominent people have a pocket notebook that they carry with them everywhere. Pen and paper are extremely convenient, and in any circumstance - when you need to write a note to someone, make notes on some issue, sketch an idea, and so on. I even managed to write whole articles on the subway.
(I did this before, but now I always take my smartphone with me. Yes, it does not allow me to physically write notes to people, however, in the form of compensation, I always have reading books (emails) at hand, plus I send the records directly to my email account, where I certainly won't forget about them)
Make it so that you are not tugged
For tasks that require increased concentration, you must try to make sure that you are not tugged. The easiest way out is to go where these bores can't find you. Another solution is to conclude an agreement with the people around you: “Do not touch me when the door is closed” or “Write to me on ICQ when I’m wearing headphones” (and then you can probably ignore these messages until you are free).
And don't go to extremes. Sometimes, when time is wasted, you need to be interrupted. It's better to help someone with their problems than to sit and climb blogs. Therefore, making certain agreements is a good idea: you can be distracted when you are not particularly focused on work.
Reduce mental limitations
Eat, sleep, exercise
The moments when you are hungry, tired or twitched are times of low quality. It is easy to increase it: eat, sleep and exercise. Nevertheless, even I sometimes do not find time for this. I am not a big fan of going out for food, so I often continue to work, being hungry, and as a result I get so tired that I simply do not have the strength to “go and make myself a meal”.
It is tempting to say to yourself: "Yes, I'm tired, but you can't sleep - there is still a lot of work." In fact, you will become much more productive if you do get some sleep. your time will be of better quality compared to if you stayed sleepy to work.
I'm not really into sports myself, so maybe I'm not the best advisor in this matter, but I try not to miss the opportunity to warm up a little. When I lie down and read, I tighten my abs. If I need to get somewhere on foot, I do a jog.
Chat with energetic people
Reducing mental limitations is a little more difficult. Having friends filled with energy helps in this difficult endeavor. For example, after talking with Paul Graham or Dan Connolly, I am always very inclined to work - they just radiate energy. Sometimes it seems like you need to hide from people and lock yourself in your room to get the job done, but this is very disorganizing, so this is not an option.
Distribute the load
Even if your companions are not energized like the Energizer, it is much easier to work on a serious problem side by side with someone else. First, the mental load is shared between two. Secondly, the presence of a colleague nearby will not let you kick the bulldozer.
Procrastination and the psychic force field
All these tricks are going around the bush. The biggest problem with efficiency is procrastination. This is such a small wormhole - everyone pulls the cat by the tail, and very much even. You are not the only one, but that does not mean that you can accept it.
What is procrastination? To an outside observer, it looks like this: you just do something "cool" (like shooting games or reading blogs) instead of doing your job. (Often this fact leads an outside observer to conclude that you are bad and lazy.) Question: what is going on inside your head?
I've spent a lot of time trying to make sense of all this, and I can explain it like this, that the brain sets up a kind of psychic force field around the task. Ever played with a couple of magnets? If you rotate them properly and bring them closer to each other, then they will be strongly repelled. Twirl them a little and you can feel the boundaries of the force field. When you try to dazzle them, the field will push them away or even scatter them in different directions.
The mental blockage works in much the same way. It cannot be touched or seen, but its boundaries can be felt. The more you strive to work, the stronger the opposition. In the end, you just change the place where your forces are applied.
Just as you cannot connect two magnets together, simply pressing very hard - they will fly apart as soon as you stop pressing - you cannot overcome the psychic force field by willpower. Here you need to take a trick - you just need to turn the magnets over.
What determines this psychic force field? Two main factors come to mind: whether the task is difficult and whether it is planned.
Difficult tasks
Divide into pieces
The first type of difficult task is too big a task. For example, let's say you want to create a recipe organizer app. Few people can just sit down and make such an organizer. This is a goal, not a task. A challenge is one specific step that you can take to achieve a goal. A good example of an overriding task is to "sketch out the screen layout when displaying a recipe." This is what you can really do.
When you do this, the next step is usually obvious. You will need to decide what parts the recipe consists of, what features are needed for the search interface, how to organize the recipe database, etc. You move forward, from each task the next one follows.
For each of my big projects, I think about all the upcoming tasks and put them in the todo list (I wrote about this earlier). When I stop working, I write down the possible next steps in the todo-list.
Simplify
The next type is too complicated or difficult task. Writing a book sounds discouraging, so start with an outline. If this is difficult, take a short summary. The most important thing is to do at least something right now.
When you already have something, you can find the best solution, comprehend the problem. Plus, it's easier to make adjustments to something real than to start from scratch. If the synopsis went well, it can turn into an essay, and then into a book, step by step, piece by piece.
Think about the task
Often the key to solving a complex problem lies in the breath of inspiration. If you are not very familiar with the subject area, obviously, you need to start with research - see how others do it, start to "feel" the territory. Get a general vision of this field of activity. Solve a couple of smaller problems to make sure you get your hands on it.
Scheduled Tasks
Scheduled tasks are those tasks that you were told to do. Numerous experiments have shown that when you try to "stimulate" people to do something useful, they tend to do it less willingly, and the quality of the work leaves much to be desired. External stimuli, such as a bonus or punishment, kill what psychologists call "intrinsic motivation" - your genuine interest in the task at hand. (This is one of the most talked about discoveries in socio-psychology - more than 70 papers confirm that bonuses reduce interest in solving problems.) It seems that deep in human nature there is a strong hatred of pointers.
Oddly enough, this phenomenon is not limited to other people; the same thing happens when you tell yourself what to do! If you say to yourself, “I have to work on X, this is the most important thing at the moment,” then suddenly X will become the task that is the hardest thing in the world to get yourself to work on. However, as soon as Y becomes the most important task, the same X is already much easier.
Change goals
The most obvious solution: if you need to work on X, tell yourself to work on Y. Unfortunately, this is the case when deliberately fooling yourself is difficult enough. you still know the real state of affairs. We'll have to act on the sly.
One option is for someone to give you another assignment. The most common example of such a decision is graduate students who must write a thesis - a kind of monumental work required for a successful graduation. And in order to avoid this deplorable fate, they agree to do a bunch of other difficult work.
Don't force yourself
It’s too tempting to say, “Okay, we have to postpone everything, sit down and finish the article.” It's even worse to start using enticements like "okay, if I finish the article now, then I'll go and eat a pie." The absolute evil is to arrange so that someone else pushes you to work.
All this is very tempting - I will do it myself! - but in fact it backfires. In all three cases, you simply entrusted the work to yourself. Now your brain will do whatever it takes to avoid doing it.
Make fun out of work
Hard work is not fun by definition, we have already passed that. And yet, this is perhaps one of the nicest things I have to do. The point is not only that the solution of a difficult task completely draws you in all the time that you are solving it, but also that after the completion of the Great Work, the bliss of satisfaction from what has been done is poured through the body.
The secret to productivity is not convincing yourself that the job needs to be done, but the belief that it's fun. If it's not fun, then you have to make it that way.
The first time I thought about it seriously was when I had to write essays in college. Writing an essay is not a difficult task, but a planned one. Who in their right mind would volunteer to write essays a couple of pages long over the text of two random books? Then I thought of turning the writing of essays into a kind of comic experiments. In one of them, I decided to write each paragraph in my own style, doing my best to imitate certain styles of speech (free bonus - this allowed more water to be poured).
Another way to make work fun is to take the task on a different track. Instead of building a web application, try building a framework for web applications using the original application as an example. The task will not only become more interesting, but the result will also become more useful.
Conclusion
There are many myths about productivity - time is the same, concentration rules, flirting with oneself is effective, hard work is unpleasant, and pulling a cat by the tail is unnatural, but they all have a common theme: the concept of real work as something that goes against yours. natural inclinations and desires.
And maybe this is the case - for most people in most professions. There is no reason why you should want to write boring essays or take useless notes. But if the public requires you to do it anyway, you must learn to turn off the voice in your head that tells you to stop!
If you are doing something worthwhile and creative, silencing your inner voice is not our method. The real secret to productivity is just the opposite: hearing the call of your body. Eat when hungry; sleep when tired; take a break when bored; work on projects that seem cool and interesting.
It seems too simple. You don't need any fancy acronyms, self-definitions, or references from successful businesspeople. This is almost common sense. But the social concept of labor pushes us in the opposite direction. If we want to become more productive, all we have to do is turn around.
Translation: Alexander Skakunov