I’m rediscovering the use of a blue SAD light for productive works/study time.
Also Newton’s cradle is good for setting a beat
Do the hardest, most disliked stuff first. Once it’s out of the way, everything else is cake.
I close the company-mandated interruption generator and only check my email hourly.
Email is the scourge of the modern office environment.
The senior execs are always braying about more productivity but refuse to turn off the pipeline blocker that is email notifications. (Honestly I think it’s a control issue.)
If it’s so urgent that it requires an immediate response, it should be an in person visit or phone call.
If not, let people get to it when they’re ready, and accept the fact that it’s not urgent.
Sometimes I swear half the fucking office building is just sitting at their desks repeatedly hitting refresh on outlook waiting for the other half to get back to them.
Anyone who wants to know how to deal with emails properly should read Getting Things Done by Dave Allen. It’s the reason why I (used to) get to go home on time every day while my colleagues grumbled about all the shit they hadn’t done yet (while still completing my full workload).
When I found that book, my workload didn’t change but my stress went waaaay down.
Since I refuse to have Teams and Outlook start on boot, I may have accidentally forgotten to open my email for 6 weeks… Most people just send me a message on Teams anyways.
Also, spam from HR. I am sorry, but your bullshit emails on senseless activities is not being read and immediately binned. The amount of spam emails I get from people in the company is astounding. At my old job I may have taken great joy in reporting each one of them as spam out of spite.
My experience is that the greatest amount of corporate spam is generated by people who have to try and justify their jobs ie. HR and upper management. Everyone else is too busy doing their actual jobs to write bullshit emails.
Close outlook and have a teams call with yourself while presenting your screen.
Windows will go into DND mode and not distract you.
I cannot wrap my head around what that accomplishes any different than just setting DND, which isn’t hard.
People ignore DND statuses. Regular DND means you are online and will still get a notification because win11 doesn’t take no for any answer.
This way it shows you are busy and if someone messages you you don’t get a sound or popup because you are presenting your screen.
Yeah Teams does seem impossible to DND at times. I’ve got a 3 monitor setup and never present from the monitor that my notifications comes through (the default). Probably why I never noticed it as an issue.
This sounds kinda lame, but I create a list of things that absolutely must be done that day to stay on track with my projects. I leave when I’m done (early if I’m fast, late if I’m slow). It creates motivation to do my work efficiently and effectively (don’t want to have to redo anything tomorrow!).
It’s not lame. I do something similar as a branch manager.
Getting good sleep, taking walks, and staying hydrated, three things that would help people if only they did it regularly.
I write myself little lists of tasks, even when I’m entirely clear on what needs to be done. It may not feel like a hack, but it sure works like one for me - it’s a simple habit that makes a dramatic impact on the flow of my day.
Advantages I notice:
- mental shift in the perceived effort - instead of a full day of indeterminate stuff, instead it feels like a list of small things
- provides clear places for breaks (which also provides an easy way to say “I’d like to do X to relax a bit, but I need to get Y small thing done first”)
- helps me avoid getting distracted and working on something low priority
- makes it clear what’s getting done (one less cognitive task, also harder to miss items) and kinda fosters a sense of satisfaction as I go
I dunno, really feels silly that it makes such a big difference, but here we are. I don’t do it every day by any means (overdoing it “roboticizes” life to an unpleasant degree), but I use it most work days at least, and sometimes to keep up with chores and personal life stuff when I get real busy.
I think this actually a form of mental rehearsal
Reminds me of Psycho-Cybernetics
I have ADHD, and if I really need to complete something I’ve been putting off for a long time, I will set a timer with barely enough time to finish it.
I have this nagging task on the computer? 5 mins, no excuses. Gotta cook real bad so I’m not eating junk food for like a week straight? Easy, quick recipe, 30 mins.
It works really well, but be warned not to use it very frequently. It can burn you out if overused.
I’ve been into typewriters for a while which is a good way to write distraction free, but also have gotten into older word processing devices and electronics.
Alphasmart devices and Palm PDAs are great ways to write distraction free but also with some of the convenience of word processing.
I lowered my sights to mediocrity level. Now I am extremely driven, because my goals are actually believable to me. I can see my progress toward them each day, and it keeps me super motivated.
From the book algorithms to live by
I check my work and personal emails once per day. Work ones are usually all just hr spam, sometimes something I need to know about in advance but it’s rare. Personal I would check less often but if I get any emails about attempts to access accounts, job interviews, etc it’s nice to be semi up to date. I also only open physical mail once per month, unless it’s something that is urgent (almost never) l
I also get through my sprint jira tickets in order from fastest to slowest (assuming all have similar priority) to take advantage of something called 2 machine scheduling. It decreases the overall wait time for the tickets. If I do a 2 day task then a 1 day task, the wait on the 2 day task is 2 days and the 1 day task is 3 days, so 5 days of wait total, in the other order 2 day task has 1 day of wait, 2 day task has 3 days for 4 days total. It honestly doesn’t change a whole lot, but it allows whoever needs to QA my tasks to get started faster and have stuff to do while I’m working too rather than extra downtime (normally not an issue because the department I’m doing a lot of work for currently is over 2 weeks behind though)
Loved that book
I spent a good couple months noting what processes took me too long to do and took me away from watching YouTube. The. I wrote a simple program that one click automates the tasks I need for the situation at hand. Now if I get the call to fix something, I click one button and turn my chair back to scrolling
Filters to delete bullshit work emails like internal message board nonsense.
ephedrine
