Noah Hawryshko
Senior Member
- Apr 28, 2016
- 901
- 891
Hey BlackHatWorld,
Just realized I hadn't shared these, so here you go! Feel free to add in any tips and tricks that have worked for you:
1. Log out of, silence, and block the notifications of everything related in any way to your personal life. Log out of Facebook, uninstall messenger, turn your phone on silent, block your email notifications if none can be urgent, etc.
2. Find a mostly quiet or completely quiet environment that isn't changing visually, audibly, or in any other sensory way that is not strictly necessary to your current work.
3. Very quiet music with no lyrics and white noise (fans, heaters, rain) make it more productive for me (personally) to work as opposed to complete silence.
4. Sleep matters more than you think. Get good rest 8-10 nights in a row without dropping even 1 night, and compare your productivity with that of how you are normally if you don't keep a good routine by default.
5. Set strict timers for breaks and keep them to the minute. Doesn't matter what you're in the middle of doing when the timer goes off, drop it and get back to work. If you hadn't eaten when the timer goes off then don't eat, if you didn't finish your text to your mom, dad, wife, or girlfriend when the timer goes off, then don't send them one. The reason that it's important to do this is because you will condition yourself to get these things done either at the start of break time (helping prioritizing) or in a timely manner if the consequence of failing to do either of these things so not eating the food or sending the important text. It sucks at first, but it helps.
6. Take and keep notes for everything, including the things that you think you'll remember, because you won't. Make the notes searchable by keyword, so that if you forget exactly what the thing is that you're looking for, you can type a couple keywords related to it into your notes file and then find your resource. Here are a couple example lines from my notes (click links at your own risk):
"instagram follow like comment limits public api: https://www.instagram.com/developer/limits/
351 generic anchor text generic words phrases list: http://www.blackhatlinks.com/generic_kw_list.txt
calculate p value statistically significant 5% math: http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-P-Value"
7. Don't switch between "work things" and "non-work things" when you're in the middle of doing work, ever.
8. If you find yourself sidetracked and reading/looking up something not relevant to work, the urge to continue looking at that resource will often times be stronger than the desire to work, because you're worried you'll forget about the cool (or potentially useful) thing. To stop this from happening, make a list to and put all the "cool" things that get you sidetracked into that list. That way, you can feel better about immediately getting back to work and putting the distracting article down, because you have it saved for later when you can read it during non-work time.
9. Don't write long text posts, responses to e-Mails, support e-Mails, or anything else of that nature during "work time". If you absolutely need to do this, do it once per 24 hours and all at once during a "respond to e-Mails" time, give yourself a time limit and word limit per-email that you respond to, don't go over it, and immediately stop the given E-mail/post if you go over the time or word limit. don't send it, don't modify it, just leave it for tomorrow during "respond to e-Mails" time. As you do this, you will condition yourself to use your time effectively in responding to e-Mails or writing posts, because the consequences of taking too long to write or respond to an e-Mail will be not sending the e-Mail, no matter what, until the next day.
10. DON'T HYPER-FOCUS and don't misprioritize! This is the most important one, because it can make your working unproductive even while you're doing the work itself. Essentially, every once in a while you want to give yourself a "reality check" and ask the question "have I spent more time doing this particular thing than is needed, and would my time now be better valued doing a different work task?". This means not spending hours perfecting something that's going to have a miniscule impact (unless you've planned time for it), not working on things that don't make the most sense to work on right now (e.g. working on a new campaign or website because the work you have to do to fix your current one is more boring), not collecting massive amounts of data when you only set out to collect a particular amount (don't get 300 photos when you only need 12 "because you might need them later"), and not going out of the way to make things pretty or good-looking if a customer won't see them.
Basically, what I do to stop hyper-focusing is set a timer while I'm working, and every time the timer goes off, I ask the above question about whether I'm spending too much time on my current task, and whether or not I should switch. 20-30 minutes is a good timer interval, relative to how distracted you get and how fast.
11. Set timers for everything not just in your work setting, but in your daily life. If your life isn't structured, your work time will vary in ways you don't want it to, and this will give you less work time than you want. Test your timers, make sure they go off when they need to and without fail. If you're using your phone for your timer make sure that you're plugging it in every night, that it lasts the full day no matter what, and that you never put it on silent no matter what. Set a timer for when you want to start work, and when you want to finish it. Drop whatever you're doing when the work timer goes off and start work even if you feel tired or are sick, consistency is key. Give it an hour if you're tired or sick, see if you get work done, see if you feel better, and then quit if you don't (no shame). More times than not you'll find yourself feeling fine an hour or so past the start of the day.
12. Never let an important thing go unplanned, or an important thought go undocumented. Do you need to do a certain work-related thing at a certain time tomorrow? Open up your phone, go directly to your calendar, and put in at least 2 alarm or audio reminders (NOT just an event, because you could fail to look at your calendar completely and not do it) about 10 minutes apart. The reason you want to have 2 is because if your alarm goes off and you set out to do the thing but forget your alarm will go off again, and the extra annoyance is better than forgetting. Personally, I use 3 alarms per thing in case I forget twice. For Android, I recommend Business Calendar 2 (unaffiliated) because you can set ringtones as reminders to your events, which makes it impossible to not hear them if your phone is with you and not on silent (rather than a single beep, for instance).
If you find or come across useful information, even during non-work hours, go directly to your phone (if you're not at your computer), directly to your notes, and then enter it. If you enter a note on your phone because you aren't at your computer, immediately after entering the note, set a couple alarms during the start of your work time to look at the note you put down, or use a cloud-syncing document solution. I personally use word documents in Google Drive, so they're editable from wherever.
That's it!
Just realized I hadn't shared these, so here you go! Feel free to add in any tips and tricks that have worked for you:
1. Log out of, silence, and block the notifications of everything related in any way to your personal life. Log out of Facebook, uninstall messenger, turn your phone on silent, block your email notifications if none can be urgent, etc.
2. Find a mostly quiet or completely quiet environment that isn't changing visually, audibly, or in any other sensory way that is not strictly necessary to your current work.
3. Very quiet music with no lyrics and white noise (fans, heaters, rain) make it more productive for me (personally) to work as opposed to complete silence.
4. Sleep matters more than you think. Get good rest 8-10 nights in a row without dropping even 1 night, and compare your productivity with that of how you are normally if you don't keep a good routine by default.
5. Set strict timers for breaks and keep them to the minute. Doesn't matter what you're in the middle of doing when the timer goes off, drop it and get back to work. If you hadn't eaten when the timer goes off then don't eat, if you didn't finish your text to your mom, dad, wife, or girlfriend when the timer goes off, then don't send them one. The reason that it's important to do this is because you will condition yourself to get these things done either at the start of break time (helping prioritizing) or in a timely manner if the consequence of failing to do either of these things so not eating the food or sending the important text. It sucks at first, but it helps.
6. Take and keep notes for everything, including the things that you think you'll remember, because you won't. Make the notes searchable by keyword, so that if you forget exactly what the thing is that you're looking for, you can type a couple keywords related to it into your notes file and then find your resource. Here are a couple example lines from my notes (click links at your own risk):
"instagram follow like comment limits public api: https://www.instagram.com/developer/limits/
351 generic anchor text generic words phrases list: http://www.blackhatlinks.com/generic_kw_list.txt
calculate p value statistically significant 5% math: http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-P-Value"
7. Don't switch between "work things" and "non-work things" when you're in the middle of doing work, ever.
8. If you find yourself sidetracked and reading/looking up something not relevant to work, the urge to continue looking at that resource will often times be stronger than the desire to work, because you're worried you'll forget about the cool (or potentially useful) thing. To stop this from happening, make a list to and put all the "cool" things that get you sidetracked into that list. That way, you can feel better about immediately getting back to work and putting the distracting article down, because you have it saved for later when you can read it during non-work time.
9. Don't write long text posts, responses to e-Mails, support e-Mails, or anything else of that nature during "work time". If you absolutely need to do this, do it once per 24 hours and all at once during a "respond to e-Mails" time, give yourself a time limit and word limit per-email that you respond to, don't go over it, and immediately stop the given E-mail/post if you go over the time or word limit. don't send it, don't modify it, just leave it for tomorrow during "respond to e-Mails" time. As you do this, you will condition yourself to use your time effectively in responding to e-Mails or writing posts, because the consequences of taking too long to write or respond to an e-Mail will be not sending the e-Mail, no matter what, until the next day.
10. DON'T HYPER-FOCUS and don't misprioritize! This is the most important one, because it can make your working unproductive even while you're doing the work itself. Essentially, every once in a while you want to give yourself a "reality check" and ask the question "have I spent more time doing this particular thing than is needed, and would my time now be better valued doing a different work task?". This means not spending hours perfecting something that's going to have a miniscule impact (unless you've planned time for it), not working on things that don't make the most sense to work on right now (e.g. working on a new campaign or website because the work you have to do to fix your current one is more boring), not collecting massive amounts of data when you only set out to collect a particular amount (don't get 300 photos when you only need 12 "because you might need them later"), and not going out of the way to make things pretty or good-looking if a customer won't see them.
Basically, what I do to stop hyper-focusing is set a timer while I'm working, and every time the timer goes off, I ask the above question about whether I'm spending too much time on my current task, and whether or not I should switch. 20-30 minutes is a good timer interval, relative to how distracted you get and how fast.
11. Set timers for everything not just in your work setting, but in your daily life. If your life isn't structured, your work time will vary in ways you don't want it to, and this will give you less work time than you want. Test your timers, make sure they go off when they need to and without fail. If you're using your phone for your timer make sure that you're plugging it in every night, that it lasts the full day no matter what, and that you never put it on silent no matter what. Set a timer for when you want to start work, and when you want to finish it. Drop whatever you're doing when the work timer goes off and start work even if you feel tired or are sick, consistency is key. Give it an hour if you're tired or sick, see if you get work done, see if you feel better, and then quit if you don't (no shame). More times than not you'll find yourself feeling fine an hour or so past the start of the day.
12. Never let an important thing go unplanned, or an important thought go undocumented. Do you need to do a certain work-related thing at a certain time tomorrow? Open up your phone, go directly to your calendar, and put in at least 2 alarm or audio reminders (NOT just an event, because you could fail to look at your calendar completely and not do it) about 10 minutes apart. The reason you want to have 2 is because if your alarm goes off and you set out to do the thing but forget your alarm will go off again, and the extra annoyance is better than forgetting. Personally, I use 3 alarms per thing in case I forget twice. For Android, I recommend Business Calendar 2 (unaffiliated) because you can set ringtones as reminders to your events, which makes it impossible to not hear them if your phone is with you and not on silent (rather than a single beep, for instance).
If you find or come across useful information, even during non-work hours, go directly to your phone (if you're not at your computer), directly to your notes, and then enter it. If you enter a note on your phone because you aren't at your computer, immediately after entering the note, set a couple alarms during the start of your work time to look at the note you put down, or use a cloud-syncing document solution. I personally use word documents in Google Drive, so they're editable from wherever.
That's it!
Last edited:
. Work ethic was probably one of the hardest things I've ever learned, so there's no need for others to reinvent the wheel.
