[raheemm]

I quit my job 6 months ago to travel and learn programming. And the greatest personal frustration has been staying productive in a work-from-anywhere, no-boss environment.

What I've realized is that discipline is not only about buckling down, but also about using mental hacks such as the ones listed in this article. Its also been helpful to realize that transitioning productivity from a cubicle to a self-directed path is difficult. It has also been the biggest surprise.

[stephengillie]

There's something to be said for the ceremony of grooming for work, travelling to your workplace, interacting with coworkers, during approximately the same time each day.

Work is the "2nd space" in the Starbuck's "3rd space" advertisements.

Have you tried working in the same seat at a library or other public place each weekday?

[raheemm]

That's a good suggestion. I use a spreadsheet to monitor the # of hours worked each day and my goal is to keep that on an upwards trend. Its based on Seinfeld's 'dont break the chain' tactic. This has worked the best for me.

[gala8y]

Being able to check time logged against projects is first, crude metric. I settled on an app with week view as a default - one glance and I know everything.

Some of my friends freak out at the possibility of 'wasting even more time' by trying to track time. I disagree. Tracking is light (0.5%?) and clears mind from all unnecessary underground thinking and stress resulting from not knowing the numbers.

The idea is to keep it simple. I track in one place and I (mostly) track projects only (billable and non-billable) plus some phone calls (with comments). Tried to track HN related browsing but... it was... never mind.

Did you added some code to the spreadsheet to make it easier to use? Any graphs to _see_ it?

[Revisor]

Is the number of work hours really what you want to increase?

[dredmorbius]

It suffers from what a lot of metrics offer: it's easily measured, easily gamed, and not particularly correlated with output.

I'd say it's probably useful to measure, but also key to keep in mind when you're warming a seat just to move that number up, rather than actually getting things done.

Including other measures of work output would be a very good modification.

[raheemm]

That's a really good question. I thought about this and for now its a fair metric. I want to reach 8 working hours a day. Once I hit that goal consistently, I'll have to look for a better metric.

[gte910h]

There is a good iPhone app called commit that tracks daily/close to daily tasks well

[krrrh]

Whoa, I had no idea that Starbucks was explicitly owning the term 3rd space/place in its advertising. If anyone's interested in the aademic source of this model of places there's a nice intro in this economist article. Cmd-f for 'third places' http://www.economist.com/node/10950463