Oddbean

I’ve tried all sorts of productivity tricks over the years. Some worked to some extent (like waking up early for example), but majority didn’t.   One “trick” that I found to work almost every time when applicable is to “just do it”.   I know it sounds stupid simple, but surprisingly a lot of people put off “just do it” and make up all sorts of weird procedures, steps to get things done. And that’s not to say that those things don’t work, but I found this other thing to work better, faster.   What do I mean by “just do it?” Instead of making to-do lists, or using timers to tackle hard projects, reverse the process and just go for the biggest, meanest, most intimidating part of the project. Throw away to-do lists and timers and just jump right into the toughest parts with brute force, determination, and if helps, lots of caffeine and high energy music. This is what has worked for me. I think the biggest key to all of this is to not think about any of it. Not a single thought, no plans, just jump into it RIGHT NOW and tackle everything you need to do to get it done in no particular order. Instead of aiming for months, aim for hours. I know… sounds crazy but that’s what I found to give me the biggest productivity boosts. Use existing solutions if applicable to speed up the process. Don’t build it all from scratch (though sometimes this is necessary). Use stuff that saves you time, processes that are scalable. I don’t know what that looks like development-wise, but I can name all the power features for designing stuff. It’s not always applicable because there are days when you don’t have big chunks of things to work on and to-do lists are on the agenda. That’s totally fine, knock out the to-do’s one by one. Curious if anyone else takes this approach?

I try to do that, and yes it's probably the best trick for productivity, sometimes i overthink things in my mind before starting or I get stuck thinking about the best approach to a problem while coding, and sometimes the best it's just do one approach that works, if you don't like it later then just change it, just move forward and keep moving.

A quick to do list is necessary for me, just because if I don't do it I tend to forget what I have to do after I finished a task 😅 So it helps me to quickly move on to the next task, rather than wondering what I actually have to do next, and forgetting half of it and their respective priority... Otherwise yeah I agree, the "just do it" technique works. You fight procrastination directly, and it starts a virtuous circle, in which the urge to procrastinate is lower and lower. It's like fightning an addiction by just "not eating", "not drinking", "not smoking" etc... It's hard, but it works.