Complice +8. Complice is an app, which, together with StayFocusd's nuclear option, and Windows' Parental control basically solved productivity for me. It eliminates both the problem Kaj Sotala described here, i.e. feeling bad about trying to do something productive because there're so many other things to do, which results in a situation where browsing reddit is preferable to work and the problem of infinite to-do lists, where it's impossible to feel satisfied in principle. (you really should try Complice out, at least by checking out integrated into it LW study hall, without signing up or anything)
StayFocusd +7. Nuclear option is invaluable. It automatically blocks all but productive websites every day (including chrome extensions page and StayFocusd's settings page ^^), so instead of googling something interesting during the day and experiencing a terrible tab explosion, I now write stuff I wanna check out to google keep/notepad and return to it in the evening.
Windows Parental control +4. Every now and then I feel a terrible urge to install Hearthstone. Well, I gave my dad the password to admin's account so now I physically can't. Instead I feel a bit distressed for a few moments and return to doing productive stuff.
Beeminder -1. As I discovered, negative feedback works terribly for me (so it's not only about Beeminder). It just makes me resentful and angers me instead of being motivating.
I have literally never been productive for more than a week in my life; more than 2 months with this combo already. I had 3 videogames relapses during that time, from which I recovered very quickly, and they all happened basically because I thought "I'm so productive, I bet I can start slacking on Complice a bit, return myself Windows' admin privileges, and I totally don't need nuclear option anymore!". Welp.
About three and a half years ago, orthonormal ran an akrasia tactics review: an open-ended survey asking Less Wrong posters to give numerical scores to productivity techniques that they'd tried, with the goal of getting a more objective picture of how well different techniques work (for the sort of people who post here). Since it's been years since the original and Less Wrong has grown significantly while retaining akrasia as a major topic, I thought it'd be useful to have a new one!
A modified version of the instructions from the previous post:
Every so often, I'll combine all the data back into the main post, listing every technique that's been reviewed at least twice with the number of reviews, average score, standard deviation and common effects, as well as links to the relevant reviews <edit: mostly canceling the last two parts part because I think it'd be too much work for me for too little benefit for the reader>. I'll do my best to combine similar techniques appropriately, but it'd be appreciated if you could try to organize it a bit by replying to people doing similar things and/or saying if you feel your technique is (dis)similar to another.
I'm not going to provide an initial list due to the massive number of possible techniques and fear of prejudicing answers, but you can look back on the list in the last post if you want. If you have any suggestions for how to organize this (that wouldn't require huge amounts of extra effort on my part), I'm open to hearing them.
Thanks for your data!
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Updated through 7/23/13. Organizing these turned out to be a lot harder than I expected and involved a lot of subjective categorization, so consult the primary sources.
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6 reviews:
Beeminder: +5.3 (SD 1.8). Details of how it's used vary a lot.
Getting Things Done (GTD): +2.8 (SD 4.0). A very broad and modular system, with opinions differing on different parts.
4 reviews:
Remember The Milk:+5.5 (SD 3.0). Frequently mentioned in conjunction with GTD.
Pomodoros: +4.5 (SD 2.5).
3 reviews:
Scheduling: +4.7 (SD 3.7)
Leechblock: +3.0 (SD 0.8)
Social precommitment: +0.7 (SD 2.6)
Unaided self-reinforcement: +0.7 (SD 0.9)
2 reviews:
Trello: +5.0 (SD 3.0)
HabitRPG: +4.5 (SD 0.5)
LW Study Hall: +4 (SD 3.0)