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> Have you faced this problem? You can be fairly certain that everyone that has ever worked at home or worked remote generally, has faced this problem. The answer is yes, everyone deals with it. I've spent most of my life working in a remote model, home office and similar. I was working in remote teams as far back as ~1997. Back then IRC was our Slack (combined with email lists and ICQ or equivalent; it all worked very well, productivity was high; it's amusing how far we haven't come). One thing I've noticed that seems to be close to universal for people, is the first five or six hours of the day after you wake up are the most critical. They're the high-focus, high-productivity hours. The brain is raring to go. Try to knock out as much high-value work in those initial hours of the day as you can, and let yourself relax more thereafter rather than punishing yourself for not being at max productivity for 8 or 10 hours per day. Working at a high level of productivity for five or six hours every day will accomplish amazing things over time. If you start working at 9am, relax your slack-off (laziness) controls after 2pm, take care of the more trivial / mundane / mindless work tasks after that if needed. Something along those lines. It's about prioritizing work importance by order of the day. Make sure you don't invert it by wasting your precious high-productivity hours on bullshit. If you try to enforce hyper discipline on yourself for 8 or 10 hours per day, seeking long durations of max productivity, you will suffer for it immensely over time and you won't end up in a good place in terms of productivity or results (including mental state, happiness). Instead, compromise with yourself. It is possible to do bursts of long hours of high productivity with limited negative consequences (especially when you're young), you just should not do it frequently, you pay a price for it. Don't fight with yourself, don't try to beat yourself into submission, it's not an effective approach; instead, structure everything so that internal wrestling match is unnecessary. Some people work better late at night, they do their best work then. The concept applies just the same, prioritize your high-value work for that time if it makes sense. |
Because of my personal needs, I am using this small program that I start when I start working. I asks me some basic questions like did I meditate, did I exercise, etc and show a list of long term goals. It runs for 8 hours (if I don't stop it with ctrl+c). It logs all that info in a json file by date for me to see in future. As long as it is running I am less likely to deviate from work. It would also tell me to drink water every hour. Wonder if there are other people out there who try to be strict with their days this way?
But, I don't really prioritise my work as you have suggested (tricky things in the morning, mundane things for later), I would definitely start doing that.