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rhollerith_dot_com comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong
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Could you elaborate a bit on that?
I noticed that I often wait for small tasks that end up taking a lot of time. For example, I need to compile a library or finish a download and estimate that it won't take long, maybe a few minutes at most. But I find it really hard to just do something else instead of waiting. I can't just go read a book or do some Anki reps. Whenever I tried that, I either have the urge to constantly check up on the blocking task or I get caught up in the replacement (or on reddit). So I end up staring at a screen, doing nothing, just so I don't lose my mental context. At worst, I can sit for half an hour and get really frustrated with myself.
I find that I worry a lot less about checking up on background tasks (compiles, laundry, baking pies, brewing tea, etc.) if I know I'll get a clear notification when the process is complete. If it's something that takes a fixed amount of time I'll usually just set a timer on my phone — this is a new habit that works well for tea in particular. Incidentally, owning an iPhone has done a surprising amount for my effectiveness just by reducing trivial inconveniences for this sort of thing.
For compiles, do something like
or run a script that sends you an SMS or something. This is something that I'm not in the habit of doing, but I just wrote myself a note to figure something out when I get into work on Monday.[1] (For most of my builds it's already taken care of, since it brings up a window when it's done. This would be for things like building the server, which runs in a terminal, and for svn updates, which are often glacial.)
[1] This is another thing that helps me a lot. Write things down in a place that you look at regularly. Could be a calendar app, could be a text file in Dropbox, whatever.
I couldn't get growlnotify to work reliably on my Snow Leopard. And some of Growl's preference panes are absurd. And Growl insists on growling at you every time it auto-updates itself, with no way to turn that off. My friend Darius dislikes it, too.
Is there a better alternative?
I'll tell you what I do even though it is far from ideal.
I have the program play a sound file to notify me. Sound is not the best way for a program to notify me because I have a habit of taking off my headphones, but leaving them plugged in.
After you install the free app "Adium" you can find some nice chimes in /Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Resources/Sounds/
I use the following command line to play a chime:
open -a VLC /Applications/Adium.app/Contents/Resources/Sounds//TokyoTrainStation.AdiumSoundset/Contact_On.m4a
Of course this presupposes you have VLC installed. And the first time I play a chime, there's a delay of a few seconds while VLC loads the chime.
ADDED. I also use a visual signal as follows. In the "Hearing" tab on the Universal Access system pref pane, I check the box "Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs". I use the Emacs function DING to generate the aforementioned alert sound. Sorry, I do not know how to generate an alert sound from the shell.
why not use mplayer for the sound?
These days I use /usr/bin/afplay. The advantages are (1) lightweight program that loads quickly, (2) installed by default on all Macs.