Much truth to these tactics for maximizing attention, esp exercise. Not mentioned is the #1 attention killer in my experience: working on boring tasks.
I’ve found productivity maximized when I make time to work on an interesting project every day or two. Making progress on enjoyable tasks gets me started with the momentum to tackle the nasty, boring ones.
My conclusion is ironic in that I’m the CEO of Amplenote, a note taking/todo list app built to ensure “urgent” or “important” tasks get scheduled to the calendar. I consider myself more disciplined than the average bear, but I’ll be damned if I can focus my attention for more than half the day on tedious tasks.
Meanwhile, when running down a feature or bug fix that will directly help me as a user, I can often focus for 12 hours of programming. I think dogfooding is central to the best products because it begets genuine interest, thus attention, from its developer/users.
I’ve found productivity maximized when I make time to work on an interesting project every day or two. Making progress on enjoyable tasks gets me started with the momentum to tackle the nasty, boring ones.
My conclusion is ironic in that I’m the CEO of Amplenote, a note taking/todo list app built to ensure “urgent” or “important” tasks get scheduled to the calendar. I consider myself more disciplined than the average bear, but I’ll be damned if I can focus my attention for more than half the day on tedious tasks.
Meanwhile, when running down a feature or bug fix that will directly help me as a user, I can often focus for 12 hours of programming. I think dogfooding is central to the best products because it begets genuine interest, thus attention, from its developer/users.