Since a lot more of us are working from home these days, with distractions all around us, focus has been more difficult for me.
If you have any productivity tips you be willing to drop, I'd be highly appreciative.
Anything (tips, software, strategies, stories) that help maximize focused work time.

I'll give you one that I found by accident,
I had a real problem with magically finding myself on Reddit / Hackernews
But didn't want to straight up block the sites.

One day I needed to screen record something professional, and didn't want my search history popping up, so I disabled it from within Firefox,
Left it on for a few days as I recorded the videos, and found I was overall more productive.
Turns out I'm a lot less likely to visit reddit if I have to type the whole URL each time
instead of just clicking the address bar and having all my favorite time wasters popup.

I've kept those settings off even after my recordings were finished.

Ended
Bribe: IgnoreFc0vMMe

View attached image.
3 years ago*

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Hey, whatever works, man. :D

3 years ago
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3 years ago
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Great idea. I already make a restricted profile for everyday use, so any malware that gets past my defenses would be limited, too. It would be very easy to make a special profile for work. :)

3 years ago
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When I don't need the internet to do my work, I disconnect my PC from the Wi-Fi just so I'm not tempted to waste time online.

3 years ago
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On YouTube (and other places) you can find tracks of hours of office sounds, those might help a little.

3 years ago
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When I was studying, I bought a small cheap laptop with no internet access and used it solely for study. I went to cafes to work too, so there were fewer distractions.
The Pomodoro Technique sometimes works for me too

3 years ago
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Trello to plan your duties. Hint:, the smaller task, the easier it is to motivate yourself and do it. If you'll find yourelf not wanting to do something break it down to smaller tasks until you'll find it quick enough to do.
What works for me are 5 categories:
1) Improtant short-term and easy tasks
2) Important long-term and difficult tasks
3) Important tasks with deadline (you start with these, naturally)
4) Important regular tasks (like meetings)
5) Uninmportant tasks (you should completely disregard them and once you can tell what is unimportant you can even delete this category because this is something you should avoid)
Important thing is: you need to find out what works best for you. Generally though, the smaller task, the easier to do it.

Delete all social media on your mobile. Nice idea to delete bookmarks etc. on your PC too. Delete all the social media accounts you think are bad for your productivity, if you can. For example I'd delete Facebook but I need it for work so unfortunately I have to keep it. I don't have it on my phone though and it does wonders for me.

Start with work, end with pleasure. There are several reasons for this:
– pleasure gives you more dopamine and dopamine is addicting,
– work gives you dopamine too but in smaller doses so it will be hard to go back to the smaller dose,
– when you start with work, dopamine gives you satisfaction feeling so you basically feel pleasure by doing work :)

Give yourself a quality relax time. Don't think about your duties at all, give your mind a rest! Thinking about work is like making push ups after the gym – you need to let your muscles rest and regenerate.

You might want to try give yourself dopamine detox: if you feel like you don't want to do anything, don't do anything. And I mean don't do anything. Just sit down without your phone, without music, without video games, without book, without pencil. Do nothing. Get bored. It works surprisingly well actually if you really do nothing :)

If you work from home: have specific habits for work and only for work. For instance: wear different clothes just for work, work in different lighting, move your desk just for work, use specific pencil just for work. It might sound silly but it acutally helps you separate work from free time and does wonders for your mentality. Also, your mind will recognize that you're in the work state and in time it'll be much easier for you to get into flow state which is the most productive phase of anything – even gaming :)

3 years ago*
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this is text is gold +1

3 years ago
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This is really good advice.
+1

3 years ago
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It is a good idea imo but I couldn't find "provide search suggestions" setting on the Chrome :D

3 years ago
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I need to use a more brutal way, so I forcefully block all distractions, using Cold Turkey on my computer. I've been looking for something similar on Android (there was Quality Time before, but it doesn't work anymore because I can leave the app anytime).
Gamifying things works for me, so I use a lot Habitica, it helps me do more stuff I would like to do in a day, but it doesn't necessarily help you to be more efficient while doing one thing.

I agree with what Iovol says about the smaller the task, the easier it is to do it. And also, if you can't begin a task because it seems overwhelming, difficult, just say to yourself you work on it for 5 min. Then it is easier to continue doing it.

3 years ago
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For blocking apps on Android, I use this app-blocker:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wverlaek.block&hl=en
I find it pretty much works for all that I need. It gives you the ability to schedule certain times to block your selected apps. What I did is create a schedule that blocks my webbrowser, YouTube (Android doesn't allow me to delete it for some reason), and Google Play (to avoid installing apps) except between 3AM and 3:30AM. This means it's basically always blocked, with the failsafe of being able to change it if necessary (by having to wake up at a time I never like being awake, so that discourages it enough).

What I do might be overkill for your needs though, but it also works for something as simple as blocking a messaging app or Instagram or something similar (including notifications if you want!) between work hours or something like that.
Hope this is what you're looking for :)

3 years ago*
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Thanks for the suggestion! I'm looking for something like that. But once again, I can kill the app manually, but at least this app explained the issue. It comes from my Huawei phone with the new EMUI and the hidden PowerGenie app. So I'll have to try to change that first.
And I thought of also blocking for most of the day except for one hour at night, when I had to finish my thesis two weeks ago, but I don't think I'll do that except when I have some urgent work ^^

3 years ago
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My problems are mostly with family lol... Granny and I have very different ideas on what's important and worth interrupting my work for. I've tried telling her to pretend I'm not actually home, and if it wouldn't be worth calling an office over, then it can wait until I'm downstairs, and not shut in my room with headphones on trying to work on audio. It helped some, especially after I accidently ignored her a few times because I work with audio and literally cannot hear someone calling me from downstairs when I'm shut in my room with headphones on. She also thinks because I can set my own hours within reason, that there's no excuse that I can't drop evverything at a moment's notice. I don't think she really understands the whole project with a deadline thing lol But after a few "no, I'm busy. My project is due tomorrow, and I need the time to actually work," she started to get used to the idea, but she'll complain to anyone who'll listen about how I'm always working... which yeah, during the day I am lol I think she's just used to when I used to work nights, to be fair to her.

My only advice for people with families that don't get it, is to try and be direct and explain your work, set some compromises, but if they're just not getting it, or not respecting it, don't feel bad about just saying no. Sure, they'll prolly get pissy, but that's on them, and they'll get over it if you stay consistent in reminding them you're busy and cannot be disturbed.

3 years ago
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Disabling search suggestions is wonderful, and I did that the moment I figured out how. Even if Firefox is still tracking my movements, I like at least having the illusion that they're not.

I'm a freak, and really good at concentrating most of the time, so the only tip that I really have is putting on some instrumental music. It blocks out the sounds of everything around you, and there aren't any words, so it's easier to read and write, and you don't get distracted thinking about their meaning or anything. I'm also a VGM nerd, so I have over 3700 video game tunes to fill that glass.

3 years ago
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There's a video from a YouTuber called CGPGrey that contains most of what I have to say about productivity working from home:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck

The gist is basically shape your environment to encourage your mind to separate work (or more generally, education, skill-building, or creation) from everything else, especially leisure activities. Working from home makes that harder, because there is an inherent locational separation between work and office in traditional working environments.
It helps make a mindset where your brain can really understand "oh I see, work time now". It accelerates the momentum needed to get into that work-flow. Similarly, this ensures you can actually effectively relax and rest when you've earned it, due to work not bleeding into sleep, or not having a feeling of dread that you could be doing something better with your time when you're deliberately choosing to play games or watching movies.
Because of that, it's really important to be rather strict about a physical separation at home for work, sleep, exercise, and leisure. And if physically that's not possible due to limited space, to create mental barriers where possible.

Apart from that, creating a work music playlist can also help. Important though: Make sure you're okay with the song selection being exclusive to the work environment, and taken out of rotation from other places where you might listen to that music.
You most likely already have a couple songs that if you listen to them, you associate them with a certain feeling or memory or event in your life. That sensation can be really strong, like a vivid recreation of that memory, or maybe even an urge to go back to whatever that song calls to in your memory. Honing that musical sensation as a way to separate a "work" mood from the rest of your daily life can be very effective, but you have to be vigilant about that separation.

It doesn't even have to be music though. Just relaxing background noise like a voiceless meditation track or like a rainforest environment can also do the trick. YouTube has plenty of hours-long audio clips to choose from. Maybe use a YouTube to MP3 downloader to store a couple of them on your computer/phone so you don't get the distraction of YouTube itself.

Hope that this helps :)

3 years ago*
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Also, I forgot to mention because it's so normal and integrated for me, but you might want to get Cold Turkey if you haven't yet:
https://getcoldturkey.com/
Super powerful program to block whatever your heart desires. I use it to ensure YouTube isn't accessible for me, because it's easily my largest time sink. I also use the Frozen Turkey option to force my laptop to lock me out at 9:30PM to ensure I go to sleep.

It recently got updated to version 4.0, which adds the ability to password lock individual blocks that you've set up. This really is a game changer for me, because it provides a failsafe in case you need to access whatever you've got blocked (like if a school assignment requires it or something similar).
What I do is create a randomly generated password, use it on the block I want, and then give the password to a couple friends with the instruction to only give it to me when there's a good reason to. Having accountabili-buddies is really helpful not just for this specific reason, but as the name suggests, they can help you hold yourself (or each other) accountable. There's a reason that the success rate in stopping smoking / alcohol vastly increases when you do it with someone else or with a group (like Alcoholics Anonymous does).

If that's overkill for you, use something like uBlock to remove a bunch of the noise on websites:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-free-ad-blocker/epcnnfbjfcgphgdmggkamkmgojdagdnn
It has the ability for you to choose certain elements on a website to block that aren't necessarily ads. I've used it before to block out the YouTube recommendations and suggestion bars to stop me going down a rabbit hole.

3 years ago
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Simple one - for those who frequently need to screenshot things for work, if you're using a Windows 10 machine, Windows Key + Shift + S = Drag-and-drop screenshot tool, that automatically copies your selection to the clipboard.

Huge time saver over Prtsc for me. And it beats having to install a third party tool, which your work may not allow.

3 years ago
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This is a battle I never win, so I have no tips for you, but I do have a bump!

3 years ago
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