c_edwards comments on How I Am Productive - Less Wrong

38 Post author: peter_hurford 27 August 2013 01:04PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (33)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: c_edwards 14 January 2015 03:08:47AM 1 point [-]

Found another helpful addition to the gmail part of the system - install google lab "Multiple Inboxes", and add an inbox for "Action" and an inbox for "Waiting" (or whatever labels you use for those categories). I set mine to show below the main inbox. So now whenever I go to gmail, I see my inbox, whatever "action" emails I need to deal with, and whatever emails I'm waiting for a response on. It helps make sure I don't forget about my "processed" emails.

What modifications? I really like the pomodoro technique (so far - still in the novice stages of using it), but its rigidity doesn't lend itself well to a lot of tasks that I deal with - reading papers and writing code, mainly. In both cases, it takes a lot of work to wrap my head around things, and I lose that if I take a break at the wrong time. So when I'm doing those tasks, I'm breaking off chunks that roughly correspond to 20 minutes (like a sub function of code, or reading the intro and methods of a paper), and working until I hit that milestone. When I'm doing something where it doesn't matter when I take breaks, I'm trying to follow the pomodoro technique more exactly.

Other than that... I'm actually not sure that I'm doing much that's very different. I think that may have been a reflexive addition of fudge factor. Although I reserve the right to make further modifications.

Oh - one minor addition to the Eizenhower matrix. I'm trying to follow a common rule in the academic world, that every day you should spend at least an hour working on the project that is closest to completion. Which is just a way of weighting things within the "Important" row.

Comment author: peter_hurford 14 January 2015 04:36:03AM 1 point [-]

but [Pomodoro's] rigidity doesn't lend itself well to a lot of tasks that I deal with - reading papers and writing code, mainly. In both cases, it takes a lot of work to wrap my head around things, and I lose that if I take a break at the wrong time.

I definitely have this problem too, now that I write a lot more code than I used to back in Aug 2013. You may be interested in my proposed solution, the Pomodoro for programmers.