[swanson]

Author here - I'd be keen to hear if anyone has had success with different productivity systems for breaking done the big goals into smaller items. I've had varying amounts of success with pomodoros and personal kanban - but always interested in trying out something new.

[vineet]

What works for me is trying to find the right way of 'tricking' myself. Every few months I feel like I have a week that is not as productive as I believe I could have been, I then basically try a trick (often something that worked for me in the past, but sometime a new trick that I might find on a site like this one).

Some tricks that have worked have been:

1. Pomodoro (actually more specifically: http://tomato.es/).

2. Redefining what I wanted to get done: For example, I used to want to run 30 minutes 5 days a week, but found that I was not able to start doing it because of being busy, tired, or for some excuse. So, I chose a distance that I could easily do in 20 minutes and decided that no matter what I had to do the distance, if only by walking. Not only did I do it with this new definition, but my excuse of being busy driving me to actually run instead of walk.

3. Making a commitment with a friend on a similar topic: This would mean reading at the same time, cooking, sleeping, etc.

4. Getting a new toy related to the task to get me to do something slightly different. This could be buying a new book on the topic, or a pad to take notes.

5. Making a commitment to much smaller sub goals when doing the task.

6. Trying to list and prioritize the easier sub-tasks so that I fool myself into making progress.

7. The carrot and the stick: I let myself get a nice breakfast outside when I wake up earlier (or do something that I have been needing to do), and I sometime say that there has to be some penalty (like not sleeping until I finish atleast one task).

8. First thing in the morning: Trying to do a quick version of the task before I do anything morning. This to me means before making any decisions (involved in serious tasks), as well as before consuming any content (blog posts, e-mails, etc).

To add a little more to the above, I take pride in me persevering, so if I actually do try a new 'trick', I work at it - often taking a few weeks to make it happen. And I often get it into my routine if only for a few more weeks.

[swanson]

Awesome! Thanks so much for this list.

I really like the one about waking up earlier, I think I'll try that out sometime.

[kamaal]

Divide and conquer always works, especially when you are chasing tasks that can't be comprehended as a monolithic entity.

During chasing any big task you need.

    a. A way to break them down in logical chunks.
    b. Way to manage and execute them.
    c. Way of measuring progress and tracking feedback.
    d. Small chunks of iteration, where you can execute, take feedback and adapt quickly.

How you do this, is left to individual convenience.

[edwinnathaniel]

I have heard many productivity techniques but I haven't read each of them in details how they work because well... I don't have time to read them in details. A 20 pages summary would probably fit me better.

Having said that, I've been building http://nbaschedules.appspot.com since October 20th (last weekend) one feature per day. An example of what I viewed as a feature: Facebook and Twitter share buttons, adding Google Maps to each stadium, adding navigation (first release didn't have a nav), etc.

I have a 6 month old kid and a full-time job in a "semi-startup" company. I also spend all of my son's waking hours to play with him. I wouldn't want to sacrifice that time slot even for a single second.

A progress is a progress is a progress. I suppose that's my core principle. Always work on something that contributes to the goal, no matter how big or small that is.

PS: This small website is just a personal playground to learn the whole SEO/Internet Marketing stuffs. Opinions and Advises are more than welcome since I'm fairly newbie (please be gentle!).

[chmike]

The blocking factor is not always time. But it is probably the most frequent excuse because it is socially acceptable.

Another way my brother formulates the OP proposal is "Start with small stone first. Try breaking bigger stones when you've mastered breaking the small stones".

[lloeki]

Completely different achievement here. Backstory: I was fit as a student: I could climb a 15m rope up with hands only, was completing 5c/6a climbs (French grade), was regularly skating around town and on a karting track, mountain biking my bike up 1000m and freeriding back down...

Then I got a stable relationship, a job, and a car. Before I knew it I grew lazy, fat, weak, and increasingly sad and spiteful. It took me a few years to actually get I was slipping down a dangerous slope and a little more to find I was the only one to blame.

It's been four years and I lost 15kg, slowly, regularly. I can ride again to work without turning into a pouch of water, turned from unable to run 1km without panting to death to running 10km not effortlessly but "easily" nonetheless. Food also improved a lot, both in volume and quality. Net result is I feel healthy again, both in my body and in my mind.

Here's the solution I came up with:

- step 1: make it a habit

- step 2: make it a habit (for real)

- step 3: wait

The first thing is actually getting that I do have the time to take care of myself, if only I want to take it. I bounded that time, just to be psychologically sure of it and not skip. First goal was running 2km without panting. Then running 3km under 20min. At some point of course I could run much longer but it would take more time (not that it was really a problem to do it, but it could become an excuse, the easy way out). So I made running the latter trivial, so that I'd have even less of a reason to skip. Alternatively, if I could not run for some reason I'd do some exercise (abs, push-ups, dips) instead for the same amount of time. Again, the goal was to minimize friction, exercises I could practice anywhere, anytime (e.g for dips I use two chairs), without failing the habit, and not thinking about it. The same basically goes for food, where I traded a high fat, high carb, processed food diet for something much much more balanced.

Also, trigger the high. At some point when running (or whatever) you just feel good because of the adrenaline rush (I may use music to help that, and running outside and focusing on your lesser used senses, especially touch, helps a lot). This is important as it triggers the reward system and helps making it a habit for real (and on step 1 it's really easy to delude yourself into thinking you have made it a habit when you really did not). Yes I'm voluntarily hacking my body to make it dependent on something, for my own good. And now when I skip doing sports or eating properly, I miss it, physically, in a very short time (short enough that the habit never breaks), not enough to feel bad but just enough to carry on. And the next day or the following one, I'm back in my habit.

I still got some work to do to regain original fit but I'm on my way there (extrapolations tell me next year), and now that I'm skateboarding, some even farther day from now I'll land a casper-to-casper (Rodney Mullen is a skateboard hacker[0]) and why not, run a marathon. Everything is possible, it just doesn't happen overnight.

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU7s-opqViM

[ipince]

I don't understand. How come this seemingly personal blog is on github.com? Thanks!

[swanson]

I publish my personal blog on http://pages.github.com/. HN only displays the github portion of the domain, sorry for any confusion.