David Seah

This is neat.

I've looked at many calendar styles that fit my needs - minimal and straightforward yet adhering to the custom quirks I wanted. I ended up with a Spreadsheet (Google Sheets) where I align the weekends (SAT/SUN) by moving the Month's start date up/down. It helps me get a bird's eye view of the critical events this/next year and tentative plans - such as travels, visas, weddings, reunions, and other events where work and family inter-twins.

It helps me look at the coming year (e.g., 2024), a few months behind (2023), and the next (2025). In the spreadsheet, I have one sheet ("Years") that marks years against significant events for the family, such as the tentative kids' graduations, college, retirement, how old is someone which year, and, of course, the likely year behind which I might no longer be operational.

For instance, I can look up where and what stage we might be in the years 2030, 2040, and 2050. Heck, I have the years dragged all the way to 2100. I'm definitely not alive to see that, but it is fun to see what year it is if you can hit 100 or what it is going to be when I hit 80.

This is, of course, only for the big-picture items. The daily, weekly, and monthly go to the calendar, and the perpetual to-do in plain text. And I know that everything will go differently than the plan -- the idea is to build an idea maze of what ifs and then the repercussions of the events that can unfold in the future. It is fun; go and play the mind game this Sunday.

I…

I use a modified version of the pomodoro technique in combination with David Seah's Emergent Task Planner [0].

The problem you describe is familiar to me - once I am in the zone I can continue there for hours, and taking enforced breaks every 20 minutes would force this streak to end early.

To work around this I just made the breaks optional, and use blocks of 15 minutes (as described in the Emergent Task Planner).

So, my timer goes off every 15 minutes. This breaks my concentration for a couple of seconds so I can reset my timer and tick a box to show I have completed another 15 minute block, and then I jump immediately back in to my task. A couple of seconds is not enough to take me out of the zone, but it lets me keep track of my progress on tasks and see where my time has been spent throughout the day.

Personally speaking, my biggest procrastination problems arise when I lack clarity about exactly what I should be working on at this precise moment, or when I finish a task and need to think of what to do next.

My bastardised pomodoro technique solves this problem for me by always making it clear what I should be doing right now. If my mind wanders for a moment, or I get distracted by an urgent task, this list allows me to immediately refocus without any mental effort. When a task is complete I might take 5 minutes as a break, and then jump on to the next task.

If my procrastination problems sound familiar I highly recommend the ETP approach. Print out five of them,…

What counts as an alternative ?

Does Seah's Emergent Task Planning [0] count ? It involves choosing a couple of tasks for the day, blocking them out, but allowing and recording interruptions.

[0] https://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/

Does Allen's Getting Things Done count ? It involves sorting work at milestones (weekly, monthly), and doing each for some reasonable amount of time, chosen by the doer. Anything that takes five minutes or less, should be done immediately.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36139432

Does the Montessori method of teaching [2] count ? It seems to involve the student learner engaging with a single chosen subject for several hours at a time.

[2] https://montessorifortoday.com/what-is-the-montessori-teaching-method/

Do the dicta 'do something until you are bored', 'perservere until you are exhausted', and 'multitasking is okay' count ?

I am of the impression that productivity strategies are just frameworks for thought. Each, with or without a formal Author's name attached, is just somewhere on the spectrum/surface of counting some work as more or less worthy of focus with heuristics for 'focus can last a some amount of time'.

I agree - I've spent a lifetime trying to find the best to do solution (Microwriter Agenda, Psion 3, Palm, GTD, One Big Text File, David Seah's productivity tools, Superfocus, etc. etc.).

Paper in the form of a hardbacked A4 notepad with context specific todo lists and a 2-week calendar seem to work well (inspired by GTD (for contexts), David Seah (for his obsession with functional paper) [1])

I'm also reliant on ZIM Desktop wiki [2] for the 'trusted system' for weekly review - of course, ZIM has a weird bug somewhere in the To Do list functionality that I've had to code around - so it's (not devastatingly) not as trustworthy... but that's life I guess

Just trying out ActiveInbox [3] for managing Gmail better and seems to be working out nicely

[1] http://davidseah.com/productivity-tools/
[2] http://zim-wiki.org/
[3] http://www.activeinboxhq.com/index.php

I've found this combination works well for me:

- The "Emergent Task Planner" is my daily piece of paper that I physically write out what I want to accomplish. At the end of the day I know what I've done and haven't done. (http://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/)

- I break my sessions of work into 2 or 4 hour blocks, and shut off all the distractions.

- If I'm struggling to stay focussed, I use a Pomodoro timer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique)

- If I'm struggling to stay off social media, I fire up Self Control (http://selfcontrolapp.com/)

- If I'm really having a garbage day for productivity, I find stuff to do off my OmniFocus List that involves physical activity (cleaning the house, fixing things, going for a walk). I work from home now, but when I used to have an office cubicle I would just walk around the building.

>I wonder if anyone ever has problems following it

Pomo is best for people who have trouble staying on-task. You see the countdown in the corner of your screen and focusing isnt so bad because you have a specific end-time. But, in my experience it only works well if you are the sort who doesn't get a lot of interruptions.

I use a printout system (Emergent Task Planner) plus Clockify to help track the real time spent on each task. It works ok and my time is billable so accurate timekeeping is a must.

https://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/

eta: i also keep an analog clock on my desk. I didn't bookmark it but sometime ago I read a piece on here about how digital clocks aren't good for measuring the passage of time and I think there really is something to it.