The most productive and successful individuals I know oscillate between multi day 16+ hour sessions of hyper productivity and multi day sessions of total procrastination.
It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series of sprints.
The dumbest thing you can do is try to be hyper-productive when you have no idea what you should be doing.
Of course, there are always five other things you know that need to get done besides the problem in front of you, but it can be a challenge to find the correct level of engagement, versus just sitting and 'marinating' in the problem in front of you.
I think the paradox is that if I spend all day doing nothing but reading documentation and farting around on Hacker News, nobody really notices. Not in the same way they notice if I spend a day on 'the wrong thing' (because I know for certain what needs to be done on this other thing). It's seen as wasting resources, because certainly I could have put that energy into the 'right thing'.
Yep. Over the last two years i've been fortunate enough to have a lot of time on my hands. In that time i've built 3 and a half successful products. 6 days of (thinking mostly, some research) about what to do. 1 day of actually doing it. It's so easy to spend that one day completely and productively - I already know what i'm supposed to do, I just have to sit down and do it.
The 6 days (not always 6 - maybe more, maybe less) let me come up with and throw out stupid ideas before i've coded them. By the time I come to build something it's a carefully considered thing that'll actually be useful most of the time.
It's not just feature ideas either, it's code design, data design, anything that might be complicated enough that I used to spend multiple days experimenting. It doesn't always work out, but when it doesn't, i've thought it through enough that I have a head start on coming up with a better design.
I'd rather not, only because they're in a market that relies on the good will of the users (who usually think that people should build these things only because they're passionate about it) and they kind of play off each other. Nothing unethical, but i'd rather not link them together if I can help it.
Oscillating between high distractibility and hyperfocus rather than fluidly directing attention is essentially the core symptom of ADHD.
As someone who has inattentive-subtype ADHD, I must say that this sort of pattern can result in a great deal of loneliness. It is far better to watch the course "learning how to learn" and use something like the Pomodoro technique to explicitly decide whether to be in
- focused mode
- exploratory mode
- actually relaxing and paying attention to your relationships mode
Okay, I've got a month of procrastination pent up, now if I could only release the hyper productivity!
When I did my last masters, I somehow managed to get into a hyper-productive state, hacking on an app to collect participant voice data for a fews sessions close to 20 hours straight. (much to the annoyance of the guy who slept in the graduate lab) I don't think it was healthy, but it sure felt good at the time.
as an ADHDer, one thing I've found key is figuring out what things in my environment and mind are the things I want to signal "you're doing the right thing, keep going."
A dopamine deficiency will cause you to seek out more frequent reward. So if you find a way to make your brain recognize reward that is on your intended path, you win.
I've found the same. When you have things to done you get them done. When you don't, you can sit around browsing the internet all day. It tends to be when things pile up that you are most effective at getting through them!
This is me but I'm totally procrastinating on code so I can hang in my garden as the sun goes down learning about myself through other instances with different circumstances in this thread. I need a break from the physical work to try to get my head space back to thinking about computers.
My sprint is not now, my sprint starts later.
The sprint toward my spirit starts now. Reading this comment, reflecting this thought. And another is below.
Upvote the comments that you can relate to and see what bubbles up
It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series of sprints.