I like the triad he breaks it down into. Here's the tricks I try to get over missing one leg of the tripod:
> Energy and Direction, No Time
I have a wife, kids, pets and work full time so this is my default state. Things that help:
1. Get off my damn phone / reddit / twitter / whatever. Consuming media on the Internet is junk food for the attention span. I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something." The next thing I know, it's three hours later, every animated GIF and cute kitten link on Reddit is purple, and I'm filled with regret.
I trying now to break my habit of consuming stuff on the web. It's ultimately not satisfying. A little news-reading is important, but any more than fifteen minutes a day or so is wasted.
This frees up an astonishing amount of time.
2. Get better at working on things in small pieces. I'm writing a book right now that's projected to be about 200,000 words. It builds up two implementations of the same programming language, and each implementation is spread across multiple chapters, so the book is highly intertwined.
You might expect that to require a ton of mental state and lot writing sessions to work on. Nope. I usually work on it less than an hour a day (which, granted, means it's going to take forever to finish). I rely on a test suite, Git, a log, and notes to myself to make it easier to pause and resume work on it and break it down into small pieces.
3. Decide what not to spend time on. Our natural tendency is to want to say yes to things -- new projects, new hobbies, new outings, new toys to play with. But since time is finite, each of those means cutting out something that's already in my life. I try to be more cognizant of that and proactively choose to not invest time in things I don't want to be doing right now even if I would like to.
> Direction and Time, No Energy
For me, this is usually laziness or analysis paralysis. Some amount of laziness is OK -- nothing wrong with some chilling and self-care. Relaxing feels good, but I find it doesn't feel as good as the satisfaction of accomplishing something, so I try to remember that.
Analysis paralysis is my personal demon. I try to remember that anything is generally a more productive path than getting stuck and doing nothing. If I'm stuck because I don't have enough information to pick a path, walking down one path is a great way to get that information, even if it requires some backtracking later.
> Energy and Time, No Direction
For me, this is usually analysis paralysis at a larger scale. The kids are finally out of the house and I've got four hours of free time. What project should I work on? Oh, God, I can't pick. Again, I try to force myself to pick something because any choice is better than no choice.
I don't personally often have the vague "I don't know what I want to do at all" problem I hear a lot from bloggers. I think many of those are coming from people who want to be a certain thing (author, entrepreneur, successful open source project lead, etc.) and don't want to do a certain thing (edit paragraphs, make sales cold calls, reply to bug reports for five hours).
They want the reward of the cachet associated with the identity but either don't want to or don't know how to do the work to get that. Personally, I'm generally more motivated by the process than the product, so I don't fall into that trap very often. I don't have enough self-discipline to spend time on things when I don't enjoy the basic mechanical process of it.
> I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something."
There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or 8:30pm instead right after the kids. Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your side project in the morning before your kids wake up.
Given the choice between reddit and side project, reddit will win. Given the choice between reddit and sleep...it's much easier to pick sleep even if reddit is more tempting.
In the morning you have 2 choices, reddit vs side project but you just invested effort in waking up at 4:30am, side project it is...
Edit: I actually see sleep as a precondition of productivity so sleeping is a 'productive activity' for me.
>
eddy_chan 1 hour ago | parent | on: Writer's Block, or the Wantrepreneur Blues
> I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something."
There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or 8:30pm instead right after the kids. Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your side project in the morning before your kids wake up.
Given the choice between reddit and side project, reddit will win. Given the choice between reddit and sleep...it's much easier to pick sleep even if reddit is more tempting.
> Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your side project in the morning before your kids wake up.
This is the exact tactic used by a friend studying PhD with five young kids. She got the PhD in four years.
Also if you do a lot of manual labour - gardening, stacking shelves whatever - sleep becomes the obvious choice.
> There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or 8:30pm instead right after the kids.
Yes!
I'm not consistent at remembering to do that, but fairly often I'll crash super early as soon as the kids are in bed. I get up at 6:00am specifically to give me an hour or so of me/project time in the morning. I could probably get up a little earlier, but it's hard.
The downside is that it means sacrificing evening time with my wife, which is also critical. And I try to exercise twice a week, usually in the evenings. And I work on my book every day, so if I didn't get any writing done in the morning, I have to stay up after the kids are in bed to do that.
That last bit... I completely agree with. Innovation is driven by emotion. In my case, it is usually frustration that the thing I wish existed that doesn't yet exist. I then make it for myself. I write a patent application for it and it's granted, but I don't make enough money to pay the maintenence fees. I do the project and it's successful, but I can't pay for advertising or whatever to keep it afloat for the few years it would take for it to gain enough traction with enough people. Or I get people to agree to a service trade and they don't up hold their end of the bargain which is sometimes video recording and editing, sometimes assisting, and sometimes other things I don't have the resources to do myself. I think doers without money are trapped in a cycle too.
I don't understand writer's block—or at least I didn't until I read your last couple of paragraphs. I'd never thought of that problem before and I appreciate your laying it out so clearly. I do think it is important to enjoy the basic mechanical process of creative whatevers, especially if those whatevers are business ideas. As an artist, I generally think of an idea as great if it is one that is not justified by the labor it takes to produce it. These ideas are what art is all about for me. Take an Andy Warhol or a Sol LeWitt or a Peter Halley... or any filmmaker who has a crew for example... they have the great idea and hire others to execute. Others are inspired to execute because your idea is great or because they are in great need of cash. Either way. I don't know how this works in business, but I thought I'd offer another perspective in the interest of sharing and learning. Thanks for your comment. It made me think about why someone would want to be a fill-in-the-blank enough to try to go through these motions and fail because they just want the identity. But then there is a solution there-- those people need to think about why they want that identity, and if in fact, that identity is actually desirable and why. I think their answer and a tweak and motivation might be found there.
1. Get off my damn phone / reddit / twitter / whatever. Consuming media on the Internet is junk food for the attention span. I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something." The next thing I know, it's three hours later, every animated GIF and cute kitten link on Reddit is purple, and I'm filled with regret.
I trying now to break my habit of consuming stuff on the web. It's ultimately not satisfying. A little news-reading is important, but any more than fifteen minutes a day or so is wasted.
This frees up an astonishing amount of time.
2. Get better at working on things in small pieces. I'm writing a book right now that's projected to be about 200,000 words. It builds up two implementations of the same programming language, and each implementation is spread across multiple chapters, so the book is highly intertwined.
You might expect that to require a ton of mental state and lot writing sessions to work on. Nope. I usually work on it less than an hour a day (which, granted, means it's going to take forever to finish). I rely on a test suite, Git, a log, and notes to myself to make it easier to pause and resume work on it and break it down into small pieces.
3. Decide what not to spend time on. Our natural tendency is to want to say yes to things -- new projects, new hobbies, new outings, new toys to play with. But since time is finite, each of those means cutting out something that's already in my life. I try to be more cognizant of that and proactively choose to not invest time in things I don't want to be doing right now even if I would like to.
For me, this is usually laziness or analysis paralysis. Some amount of laziness is OK -- nothing wrong with some chilling and self-care. Relaxing feels good, but I find it doesn't feel as good as the satisfaction of accomplishing something, so I try to remember that.Analysis paralysis is my personal demon. I try to remember that anything is generally a more productive path than getting stuck and doing nothing. If I'm stuck because I don't have enough information to pick a path, walking down one path is a great way to get that information, even if it requires some backtracking later.
For me, this is usually analysis paralysis at a larger scale. The kids are finally out of the house and I've got four hours of free time. What project should I work on? Oh, God, I can't pick. Again, I try to force myself to pick something because any choice is better than no choice.I don't personally often have the vague "I don't know what I want to do at all" problem I hear a lot from bloggers. I think many of those are coming from people who want to be a certain thing (author, entrepreneur, successful open source project lead, etc.) and don't want to do a certain thing (edit paragraphs, make sales cold calls, reply to bug reports for five hours).
They want the reward of the cachet associated with the identity but either don't want to or don't know how to do the work to get that. Personally, I'm generally more motivated by the process than the product, so I don't fall into that trap very often. I don't have enough self-discipline to spend time on things when I don't enjoy the basic mechanical process of it.