Ask IH: How do you prioritize and complete tasks while blocking distractions?
Hi fellow IndieHackers,
I've been following this community for awhile now and have learned a great deal about building a successful product (especially the insights about the hustle afterward in marketing and getting customers). Everyone's stories have shown me that there's still so much opportunity that exists!
Here's my story:
When I quit my full-time job to become a freelancer and Indiehacker, the biggest challenge I faced was being able to effectively prioritize and complete my work while blocking distractions in a flexible work environment (remote). I had so many ideas I wanted to pursue but couldn't focus on anything besides the growing list of to-dos.
I would love to learn more about how all of you:
- plan and prioritize your work
- block distractions
- what tools you regularly use to get shit done (and finally launch these awesome projects)
I created a quick survey to keep track of results: Survey Link
Happy to share my findings with the community :)
My goal is to combine all the lessons I've learned along with the experiences of others (including you all) to build a tool that helps people do more meaningful work while blocking the noise.
Your feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks!
Hi Neel,
I wrote an article last week on my approach to maintaining focus. It's a bit long, but I think it does a good job of distilling my strategy.
https://medium.com/created-with-writing-ai/maintaining-focus-in-a-distracting-world-181336c99c06
Regarding planning and prioritization, I spend a lot of time just writing into a notebook (http://imgur.com/IZLGaWk). That writing is a mix of planning, design, and arguing with myself about the best way to do things. I regularly reprioritize, generally a couple times a week unless I'm deep into working on a problem.
After I map out my current priorities, I usually go to Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/) and update a running list of to-do items that I keep there. I break things into daily, weekly, and a general backlog. It's never an absolute list, and I'll periodically go in and clean up what I have in there. I used to manage these lists strictly, but it wasn't worth the effort over what I do now.
On top of these steps, I usually set out my goals for tomorrow before bed on paper (preferably) or Workflowy via my phone if I'm already in bed when I think to do it. I also do this on Sunday evenings for the coming week. Both lists are as short as possible (3-5 items max), to force me to pick what I really need to focus on.
I've tried more rigorous strategies in the Getting Things Done mold in the past, but what I currently do works better for me. I agree with David Allen's premise that we need to get stuff out of our head to focus and be productive, but I think his methods worked a lot better before we had smartphones to help collect and organize our thoughts. Now they seem a bit overkill, to me at least.
Hope this helps, good luck with your endeavor!
Thanks for sharing your workflow, Nate! Your article definitely included some of the key problems I struggled with.
This comment was deleted 9 years ago
This comment was deleted 9 years ago
To focus on the task at hand I found the pomodoro technique a very useful tool. No distractions and high concentration for 25 minutes and my productivity skyrockets :D
Thanks for sharing Lazaros! A couple of quick follow-up questions:
Nothing fancy. I just put my phone on airplane mode so I don't get distracted by notifications. Sometimes I use earplugs if I am in a noisy environment.
I experimented with the length of the working sessions and found that 25 minutes are working best for me. But this is not set in stone. Sometimes when I get into the zone I just skip the resting period and continue working.
I keep a separate laptop for distracting sites. Some sites that I occasionally need on my workstation (FB, Twitter) are in a different browser.
Thanks for sharing! It's great that you're able to keep yourself accountable. Not sure I could do the same haha
I block websites using the chrome extension "StayFocusd"
Thanks for sharing Alex! How do you like "StayFocusd"?
Anything it could do better?
It's great, my only problem with it is that there's not just an on/off switch. You have to put in a specific amount of time every time you want to use it. Then, when I'm done with my work sometimes I finish before the timer goes off so I have to wait. But I figured out that incognito mode doesn't use your extensions.