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muflax comments on Anti-akrasia tool: like stickK.com for data nerds - Less Wrong
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Nice idea, but to me that's not the real problem. My main problem is not about doing something once I decided I want to do it (on that part I'm quite ok, far from perfect, but ok), but about choosing what to do.
There are so many things I want to do, and so few time, that it's very common to me to "freeze" on a typical sunday morning, when I've the whole day to do something, but have to decide what to do. I often switch from one task to another not finishing any, or spend lots of time choosing what to do, or just decide to go with something fast so it doesn't prevent me from doing something else later on the day (and I end up not doing much of the "big" tasks). It happens both in my "hobby time", and, to lesser extends since the options are more limited and the deadlines stronger, in my work.
Does anyone have a similar problem ? And have tips on to overcome that problem ?
Assuming you have a good idea what tasks you want to do in total, just automate it. Try to delegate away as many day-to-day decisions as you can.
I extended my todo scripts for that exact purpose. I track how much time I spend on each task and how much time I should spend, based on a relative weight. (As in, this task is 2x as important as this and so on. I estimate my weights by starting with 200 usable hours per month and then distribute them among all tasks, using the assigned hours as a weight.) The script then checks if "time spent on task this week" is close to the relative time it should receive, according to the total time I've worked so far, and sorts all tasks based on their deficit. I then just do whatever project is furthest behind for as long as I can concentrate, let the script pick the next one and so on.
Advantages: I never have to make any decision except when choosing the initial projects. (This happens rarely and is no problem.) No individual project ever gets ignored. I don't have to bother with timeboxes, I just work for at least ~15 minutes (I have an automated alarm for that) and then continue until I get bored / tired. I only have to personally check and maximize one variable - total time worked per day. It's as simple as "make this number go up".
Works pretty well so far.