[HN Gopher] Focus by Automation
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Focus by Automation
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 94 points
Date : 2024-03-20 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (myme.no)
| croemer wrote:
| While I new that the shell has emacs-style bindings I didn't know
| these were really readline based and supported things like undo.
| I should go read up on more readline keybindings.
| jebarker wrote:
| I've come to believe that time spent on organizational tools and
| processes is a form of procrastination that's actually
| detrimental to focus and productivity. I found much more focus
| and productivity after I read 4000 weeks and switched to just
| using a text file for notes and planning.
| myme wrote:
| I completely see your point, and my boring response is "it
| depends". How heavily I rely on my personal organizational
| setup depends a lot on context. For instance, at $WORK I need
| time-tracking and tracability of tasks due to audits. Having a
| system I barely have to think about is crucial to me in this
| setting not to waste time in horribly slow web-based ERP-
| systems. For personal projects I stick to a single text file of
| issues and ideas. Knowing what to use when is part of the
| general assessment imo.
| dailykoder wrote:
| For me, the crucial part is to create a tool/script that just
| gets one task done as fast as possible. I don't need tools
| that can do everything. Often it's just a bash script that
| executes like 5 commands to execute/build something, so that
| I don't even have to think about those steps and don't forget
| one.
|
| Tho it is a really fine line to not get hung up on those
| organizational tasks, yes.
| blowski wrote:
| It's similar to me wanting to get fit by spending a whole day
| deciding which trainers to buy, then never wearing them. The
| illusion of progress.
| freeplay wrote:
| I felt this one.
| switchbak wrote:
| There's a flip side: you can focus all of your time on
| 'working hard' but never pay attention to how you're doing
| it.
|
| In fitness this might be more like: you spend all your time
| jogging in terrible shoes, working "comfortably hard" and
| pushing through the pain.
|
| Instead you could spend a few hours researching modern
| training approaches and running techniques and change the
| entire trajectory of what you could achieve as an athlete.
| You can change the focus of how you work, reduce wasted or
| ineffectual energy and put that into dedicated efforts that
| have maximal payoff.
|
| This debate is as old as work itself though, and I'm probably
| not changing any minds here.
| blowski wrote:
| Yes, this is "sharpening the saw". But we all know people
| who, despite boasting a lot about their extremely sharp
| saw, chop zero trees. Balance, in all things.
| skydhash wrote:
| My advice is too start on paper (notebook, planner) until you
| find your workflow. If you can't because it can be cumbersome,
| use a set of tools like Apple's default until the pain points
| prove unbearable. Then you choose something more suitable. I
| myself have settled on Bear and Things, but that's because they
| introduce joy in my workflow (beautiful softwares). But I can
| replicate my system using any tools, including paper.
| sndean wrote:
| This has been my experience using Obsidian and many other
| similar tools. I've settled on text files sync'd using iCloud.
| There being whole books, podcasts, courses, etc. about what I'm
| doing with a lot of .txt files really supports the idea that
| it's mostly procrastination. (And, yes, I'm procrastinating by
| replying on HN.)
| criddell wrote:
| I've tried to do the todo.txt thing but not being able to
| sketch or paste in photos or screenshots was a bit of a
| blocker. Apple Notes with the Pencil stylus is ideal for me
| right now.
| switchbak wrote:
| I spent a few hours automating some repetitive tasks in a way
| that takes almost the entire burden off of my brain. Then I
| wired it up to a Stream Deck so these things can notify me
| asynchronously and easily run in parallel.
|
| That was a pretty simple investment, but a total game changer,
| it saves me gobs of time every month, and was a no-brainer
| investment.
|
| Granted, not all dev workflows are as annoyingly complex as
| mine, but nonetheless: you're statement is all-encompassing
| when in fact it's very context dependent. In my case, your
| advice was simply not true.
| r0n22 wrote:
| What type of tasks ? This sounds really interesting?
| jebarker wrote:
| I didn't mean to provide advice or make an all-encompassing
| statement. I just said what has been true for me.
| paulddraper wrote:
| The threshold is much different for an individual vs a team.
|
| The more minds and hands there are, the more a repeatable,
| consistent process is needed.
| haswell wrote:
| This is absolutely a failure mode that can happen and I think
| people should be aware of it/be cautious about not falling into
| the trap, but I don't think this is categorically true, if for
| no other reason due to the extreme differences in how people
| think.
|
| I've absolutely spent time procrastinating by hunting for the
| perfect tool, and it took me some time to realize that. But
| I've also found that a good tool can be a force multiplier that
| can make a huge difference in productivity and more
| importantly, the likelihood that I'll stick with something.
|
| I've tried and failed numerous times to succeed with a simple
| text note. I love the idea of the simplicity. But I could never
| make it work.
|
| A few years back I learned that I have aphantasia - my mind's
| eye is blind. When digging into this, I learned that people's
| ability to visualize is a spectrum, and while I'm on one
| extreme end of it, there is a huge variance in how people
| experience the act of thinking. It made me realize why <thing>
| that worked for <person> never worked for me, and why you'll
| find so many people evangelizing <specific approach> because it
| worked for them.
|
| I've learned that tools that help me visualize my thoughts
| completely change my relationship with them and help unlock
| deeper thinking. Over time, I've realized that some tools
| really are "tools for thought". My brain can't do X, but Y tool
| can, and it becomes part of my extended conscious experience
| and enables me to do things I couldn't before.
|
| I think the critical factor here is to be honest with yourself
| about what is or is not actually working for you. Recognize the
| trap of trying to solve problems with tools that aren't really
| going to change much. But do use tools that help.
| patrickdavey wrote:
| What tools/methods have you found that help with aphantasia?
| haswell wrote:
| For awhile, I was using Miro. The infinite canvas made it
| possible to start arranging information visually and made
| it easier to load things back into memory when I'd come
| back to a project later. I still love it, but prefer
| something local and less proprietary.
|
| Currently, I'm pretty all-in on Obsidian. I don't have a
| crazy setup with tons of plugins and I'm not building
| complex data tables or anything like that.
|
| I use:
|
| - Daily journal note to jot down thoughts and what I'm
| working on or thinking about each day
|
| - Very actively use [[Link Syntax]] in notes to create
| placeholder connections to unexplored ideas or real
| connections to existing notes
|
| - I use the Canvas feature to visually arrange things and
| love that I can embed notes into the canvas or start a
| local card on the canvas and later convert it to a
| standalone note
|
| - I occasionally use the note graph view to see how
| previous journal notes cluster around specific topics. I
| know some people find this part of Obsidian gimmicky, but
| for me, it helps me find common threads and identify
| interrelated ideas
|
| - I focus on creating small notes that I can grok quickly
| and rely on note-to-note connections to navigate larger
| topics
|
| I don't know how much of this workflow is directly
| applicable to Aphantasia, but the canvas feature in
| particular is where I feel like I get the most value in
| terms of visualizing what I otherwise can't.
|
| I also use tools like Figma/Balsamiq to get product ideas
| out of my head. It's crazy how different things can be once
| they go from an abstract notion of "an interface that does
| X" to an actual drawing of an interface that does X.
|
| If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run
| locally, I'd use it extensively. Just a nice big toolbox of
| different ways to visualize things.
| sea-gold wrote:
| > If there was ever a tool like Miro that I could run
| locally, I'd use it extensively.
|
| Does Excalidraw[1] fit the bill?
|
| [1] https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw
| haswell wrote:
| It gets me partway there. The thing that I really liked
| about Miro is that is has tools ranging from kanban
| boards to data tables to icon libraries and is sort of a
| jack of all trades sort of tool that goes beyond just
| drawing and adds structure to some of the elements you
| can put on the canvas.
|
| This makes it really easy to transition between quick
| wireframes, sequence diagrams, sticky notes, to
| structured data, tasks with rich cards, statuses, etc. I
| haven't found a good direct replacement yet.
|
| I do need to give excalidraw another look because I think
| there's a decent Obsidian integration and I could
| probably approach some of the things I was doing with
| Miro in a more Obsidian-centric way.
| pricci wrote:
| There is an Obsidian integration also
| myme wrote:
| Thank you for this nuanced view.
|
| I honestly didn't want the post to center around the
| organizational bit, it was a late addition, because there's
| the caveat that it gets interpreted as "this is how you gain
| productivity". In my specific case it's more about flushing
| thoughts that otherwise would continue to drift in my mind.
| This is also why I write. It's calming due to the fact it
| allows me to lay things to rest.
|
| > I think the critical factor here is to be honest with
| yourself about what is or is not actually working for you.
|
| Yes, and in order to do so you need to do the occasional
| introspection and be a mindful of your ways. We all have our
| quirks and it's also fine to acknowledge this. I still have
| plenty of "bad habits", many which I have no intention of
| breaking any time soon.
| jebarker wrote:
| Yep, I didn't mean to suggest this was my advice for all
| people, it's just what has worked for me.
| myme wrote:
| Yes. And that's also the risk I run with including such
| anecdotal "evidence" from my own process, because it
| definitely won't click with everybody.
|
| I've witnessed people close to me be highly successful with
| the "single file" approach that you yourself swear by. My
| point was that most people probably will have some benefit
| of choosing _some_ approach, and not try to keep it all in
| your head.
| west0n wrote:
| Previously, I also used various so-called tiling window managers
| and configuring lots of shortcuts to improve my typing
| efficiency. Now, I mainly focus on researching how to use GPT to
| generate code .. Perhaps, in the future, using GPT effectively to
| generate code and documentation could create many 10x or even 20x
| programmers.
| dailykoder wrote:
| Maybe I just haven't used those "enough" yet, but I don't feel
| like chatGPT and others increase my productivity. Yes, they are
| nice to get some quick sketches/outlines, but that's about it.
| I rarely use them. Most building blocks are stored in my head
| by now and I don't even have to think about them.
| tazu wrote:
| I've found it most useful for generating code I don't have to
| maintain (one-off scripts) and lots of regex stuff.
| anbotero wrote:
| It may not be the same for everybody, but I once tracked 6
| months with normal mouse usage, 6 months without but a lot of
| shortcuts... Do you know how much time I saved? Roughly 2
| hours.
|
| I still use them and I do it without mouse whenever I can,
| mostly for everyday ergonomics, but I use the mouse when I
| really need to without thinking how I could do it without it.
| It's important to take breaks too, longer-Pomodoro helps.
|
| As with GenAI, I'm already doing documentation with it. I pass
| it some YAML file or my own previous documentation, ask it to
| generate an organized version, I review it and edit it, and
| that's it. For writing unit tests it's been really helpful in
| environments where there is no QuickCheck or something that
| generates tests.
|
| Yes, it's about using them efficiently, but we have to make
| sure it's actually providing the positive impact we expected it
| to create.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| > but I once tracked 6 months with normal mouse usage, 6
| months without but a lot of shortcuts... Do you know how much
| time I saved? Roughly 2 hours.
|
| I'd be interested in techniques/tools you used to measure the
| time saved. Your point is extremely important and a
| discussion around measuring the positive impact would be
| helpful.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| The distractions and breaking focus is part of how I program.
| When I'm trying to solve a difficult problem, getting away and
| thinking about other things usually makes a solution bubble up,
| and then I sit down and pour out something working fairly
| quickly.
|
| My only org tool is a journal i keep in a Google spreadsheet
| (shortcut on phone home screen) where i note hours and log what
| i've accomplished, fails, questions, and ideas. I've never been
| so unstressed organized as a programmer now that I use this very
| low effort journal.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I work in a similar way. If I focus on a problem for too long
| at a stretch, I find myself running in circles. I have to break
| things up with a distraction, oddly said distraction being a
| different problem, sometimes. It's uncanny how solving one
| smaller issue lets me get back to the larger one with a fresh
| take.
|
| As for the journaling part, not so much. I've tried a few
| methods, but either they don't jive with the variety of tasks I
| have to track, or they end up being couched in an app that
| makes the process a slog. What I'd love to see is some simple,
| customizable, text-based project management software that can
| be cloud or local hosted, but like others have said, I risk
| falling into that trap of hunting for that perfect tool.
|
| So, notebook and pen it is, for now.
| davidthewatson wrote:
| This essay resonates as it touches upon many long conversations
| I've had with a friend around our attempts to create a postmodern
| PKM system strung together with glue code, duct tape, and bailing
| wire while juggling chainsaws and bowling balls as GPT
| infrastructure exploded in the post-COVID era.
|
| In particular, I've found myself drawn to my early enculturation
| around the dichotomy of control implied by the mouse's Cartesian
| implications on what has increasingly been a 3-dimensional or
| n-dimensional thought space in the spectrum from API to GUI to
| HCI.
|
| LSS: the faster I type the slower the distraction of mousing
| becomes - mentally and physically! If only more people read
| Fitts!
|
| In my journey, this has involved everything from Microsoft and
| IBM's early joint venture work around CUA in OS/2, MAYA Design's
| introduction of mouse-manipulating Z-order (zooming) in DEC
| Workscape (noted by Mary Czerwinski of Microsoft Research... I'm
| not certain whether this was before, during, or after Bederson's
| work on Zoomable UI at U Maryland), Synergy's liberating the
| mouse's physical computer-monitor confines between Linux, Mac,
| and Windows twenty years ago, to tmux, tiling windows managers
| such as hyprland and the combo of sway and the Logitech multi-
| platform keybaords and mice on which I'm typing, Oh, I forgot my
| daily usage of helix. But I digress. The guys who wrote the post-
| modern computing tongue-in-cheek paper twenty years ago in Canada
| (IIRC) weren't wrong, at least satirically.
|
| This has all served the quest to find a spatiality of computing
| that mirrors and moves at the speed of thought. I've come close,
| but none of these has really worked in the holistic and
| integrated way that I've sought. Time will tell whether Brett
| Victor or the like has a beyond-Englebart-or-Kay moment.
|
| I'm hopeful while remaining cautiously optimistic.
|
| Sway and hyprland could certainly benefit from integration with
| software like synergy, hardware like the logitech devices, or any
| notion of "beyond Cartesian" at the keyboard. The obvious
| challenge is scaling usability in light of exploding complexity
| of the controls, mechatronics of control, and targets of control,
| both mental and physical - literally the origin story of the
| mouse itself. In much the same way that AI divides the room, so
| did the need for metrics that could start with Fitts while
| crossing the mental and physical chasm from API to GUI to HCI.
| Sadly, we're not there yet.
| jrussino wrote:
| Was anybody else a little irritated that the "MonkeyUser" comic
| "FOCUS (2018)" included in the article:
| https://www.monkeyuser.com/2018/focus/
|
| seems like a pretty blatant copy of the Jason Heeris comic
| "programmer interrupted (2013)"?
| https://winthropdc.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/programmerint...
| tibanne wrote:
| Not really, memes evolve, Jason should take pride that people
| want to copy his idea with modification.
| aragonite wrote:
| One thing not covered by the author under "automate to save
| mental energy" is that you can save a ton of mental energy by
| randomizing. Where do I go to get lunch today? Which item on my
| to-do list to tackle in the next hour? Which podcast episode to
| listen to during today's walk? Letting these decisions (even much
| more consequential decisions if you are in the mood for it) be
| settled by chance not only conserves mental energy (by reducing
| the cognitive load of decision making) but can also be good for
| mental health (when outcomes are left to chance, you feel no
| self-reproach for unfavorable results, and feel only gratitude
| for favorable ones).
|
| I used to carry a dice around with me just for this purpose.
| Nowadays, just for fun, I first mentally generate a random
| mapping (e.g. "even number do X, odd number do Y") then look
| around my physical surroundings until my eyes land on a number.
| myme wrote:
| Ah. Great input and an approach I really haven't considered! I
| think this could be great advice for people who struggle with
| various degrees of decision fatigue.
|
| Personally I tend to be quite impulsive and somewhat random "by
| design". Some might call it "creative". In any case, I tend to
| get energy from uncertainty where others around me prefer more
| structure. And vice versa, I feel more friction when there are
| no choices. My personal backlog serves as a counterweight in
| order to stay on track.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I have long felt the same way as you. But I do think everyone
| benefits from structure - I think the difference is in
| whether we can accept (or tolerate) externally-imposed
| structure, especially when we disagree with it. If not, the
| coping mechanism is to DIY structure, and (sometimes) to
| "fake" acceptance of the external structure.
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