Ryan Tomayko

How Software Engineers and Designers Can Increase Their Focus —

Finally, a How To Be Productive system I can get behind:

Q: Favorite web or mobile apps for getting focused?

A: I don’t use apps to get focused. Playing around with productivity apps is just another way to procrastinate. You become more productive by getting into the habit of doing actual work regularly, not by constantly thinking about how you can get more work done.

I don’t even use a to-do app. If something is important, I’ll remember it. If I have an idea I’m afraid I might forget, I set a reminder in my calendar on a date when I know I’ll have time to work on it. On that date, I’ll either work on it, discard it, or reschedule it.

Don’t miss Lukas’s definitive tip for massive increasing productivity and intelligence at the end. It’s money in the bank.

Do It Now —

Nice. The todo / email / information “management system” I’ve been using for a while has a name now:

This doesn’t just apply to email, of course — it works for any todo list. But only if you say no to reordering, prioritizing, estimating deadlines, and doing the most important things first. Forget all that. Do it now.

Seriously. All that productivity snake oil is destroying your productivity. Being productive at managing productivity is not the same as being productive.

Glims —

Safari extension that add’s a bunch of features I’ve missed since switching from Firefox: an awesome full screen mode, live search completion + results, open tabs to the right of current tab (instead of on the very very right), and a bunch of other stuff I won’t use.

Via Minimal Mac, my new favorite website.

The Menubar Challenge —

I didn’t realize how much shit I had in my menu bar until I went through and did this:

There is a tried and true uncluttering trick for your home and office used by many professional and highly paid “Organizational Consultants”. It involves taking everything you own, save for the bare essentials, and moving it into storage. For a set period of time, retrieve items from the store when needed. Anything not accessed after said set period of time you likely do not really need and should be disposed of.

I have no idea why I ever had Sync (don’t use), TimeMachine (don’t use), Growl (useless), or Bluetooth (useless) enabled.

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule —

Paul Graham at his finest. This is why I’m so pissy at the end of the day when I can’t get a single four hour chunk of time together. The thing is that you can do the same work in four contiguous hours what takes eight in interrupted hours.

Screencast: "I use Vim for everything" —

There’s so many great workflow hacks in here.

An Under-Appreciated Fact: We Don't Know How We Program —

“… in every one of these processes and diagrams there is a box which basically says ‘write the code’, and ought to be subtitled ‘(and here a miracle occurs)’.”

Burning the midnight oil —

Ethan Vizitei on the difference in productivity found in the middle of the night vs. any other time of day. Nails it, IMO.

7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 [video.google.com] —

Recent presentation by Mr. Bram Moolenaar on how to be a bad-ass with Vim.

Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith —

Nice article on burnout, which I have to admit I’ve been struggling with on and off for the past six months or so :–(

UNIX productivity tips —

Best UNIX productivity article I’ve read in a long while.