What are your focusing techniques?

2 hours ago, LAURENT* said:

What are your techniques for sitting down and really getting to work without a distractions?

You are asking two questions: (1) how to motivate myself, and (2) how to get rid of distractions.

1. If you need motivation for a personal project, don't bother. Do something else until you are motivated. That "something else" might include making a list of what motivates you, and a list of reasons to do the personal project, and a list of other things you'd rather do than that personal project.

2. Assuming you're motivated to do the work, put your smartphone in another room, and put a "do not disturb" sign on your door.

I don't need "focusing techniques." When I'm working on a personal project, the hard part is stopping.

Like Tom, I think if you need motivation to do your personal projects then you shouldn't do them. That's different from personal chores, like housekeeping and simple chores, but things you do for fun should be fun. If they aren't fun then you aren't doing them for fun, and you should do something else for fun.

As for drive, I've got a wall in my room that is set up as a task board, similar but slightly different than those used by scrum / kanban, and other systems. It is there to help me keep the bigger picture in mind. I'm doing a series of watercolor paintings, and my board has the entire series on it. I can look at it to see how much progress I've made, and the board is always there to look at.

I can also see the big number of projects I've completed, and the projects I think are important but are incomplete because they don't seem like fun at the moment; they're on back-burner. For example, I've had the task of hanging a bunch of pictures on the board for about four months. I know once I do it I will have fun, but I haven't (yet) felt the urge to do it. I know it is a potentially fun activity, something that when I am in the right mood I will enjoy immensely. But right now it isn't something I would find fun to do, so I don't do it for fun today.

When I'm engaged in my own projects for fun, usually it takes my wife coming to get me at 2:00 in the morning and asking if I'm coming to bed or if I'll be taking the following day off work. Other distractions aren't the problem, the project itself is the distraction that I want to enjoy.

I want to work in a consistent schedule now. I've had moments when I couldn't stop working but those moments are random and unpredictable. I don't want unpredictable, I want to be consistent. I tried forcing myself to work on projects when I'm not in the mood and the results aren't what I'm liking. I'm doing very well with practicing and maintaining good habits and I want to continue applying more good habits to my daily life.

How do you focus on the job then? My focus is really random and I want to control it. There have to be someway to do it.

It is a bit dated, but I once addressed the importance of the mental process here:

Might be worth a read? It worked for me (of course, I no longer apply the 5-1-1 'as is', but the framework remains a core part of what I do, and it served me quite well!)

I have two opposite approaches. Either put an acceptable distraction on a secondary monitor (gameplay stream / esports, nature documentary, films that are either terrible or have already watched repeatedly), so that my urge to be distracted is constantly met, or put on some music and run a website blocking plugin that admonishes when I try to absent mindedly navigate to time wasting websites (and also quit skype, discord, etc). I also find having headphones in one ear to be better than in both.

On 10/07/2017 at 4:44 AM, frob said:

Like Tom, I think if you need motivation to do your personal projects then you shouldn't do them.

I hate to be "that guy", but that attitude is really toxic towards people with mood disorders. It's hurtful advice. Not all of us have the ability to simply do normal every day enjoyable things without first literally forcing ourselves to climb out of a paralysis that would rather have you crawl under a rock to die and struggling to find the rhythm required to keep doing something that you know you enjoy. A lack of motivation does not mean a lack of enjoyment or other positive experiences.

There are many reasons why one might feel unmotivated.

It actually takes a substantial amount of self-awareness and introspection to discover why we ourselves feel this way. Sometimes it feels obvious, but sometimes it doesn't. And being aware of the many existing reasons for demotivation is a vital first step towards changing our habits and inclinations.

I find it important to reflect. I might have three straight days of low productivity due to motivation, but upon thinking about it carefully, there may be three totally different reasons for feeling unmotivated each day! This is probably my biggest suggestion for anyone dealing with motivation or focus challenges: try to understand yourself and your reasons for feeling this way.

But don't get lost in the bad. It also helps to think about why you want to feel differently in the future.

Understanding the root cause of a problem is key to solving it. Just throwing other people's strategies at it won't work for very long. You need to know yourself well enough to understand why you have up and down days, and be honest enough to admit when you don't feel as good as you'd like.

Sometimes it just isn't an option to be unable to motivate or focus. So get to the core of what's going on in your head, and why, and you'll have the beginnings of a map to solving the situation.

For me my main motivation/focus technique is simply that I want/need to get something done in a certain amount of time. I often set up deadlines for myself to make sure work gets done in a timely manner.

16 hours ago, Hodgman said:

I hate to be "that guy", but that attitude is really toxic towards people with mood disorders.

Fair enough. I have that situation for weeks at a time. (I'm bipolar. It sucks. Yay! And hooray for medicine.) During the down cycles sometimes that is a key: Do stuff that you used to find fun even if it isn't fun at the moment.

However, I'd still say in the typical case a hobby should be something you enjoy at the moment. If you don't enjoy it at the moment, consider doing something else until you feel the need to return to it.

Work on easier parts when you feel less inspired.

On 7/11/2017 at 4:49 AM, Hodgman said:

that attitude is really toxic towards people with mood disorders. It's hurtful advice.

If I offended or hurt anyone with my words, I am deeply sorry. I had no clue if someone here had a mood disorder (and didn't mean to omit the possibility of mood disorders). In my defense, nothing I say can ever be true for everyone at every time in every endeavor. (Blanket statement: no blanket statement ever covers everything.) There's an exception to every rule (even this one). Sometimes I try to acknowledge that truism when making a statement - but it usually just overcomplicates the matter, so most of the time I leave such disclaimers out.

On 7/9/2017 at 10:14 AM, Tom Sloper said:

If you need motivation for a personal project, don't bother. Do something else until you are motivated.

I don't follow my own advice all the time. One thing that motivates me is time pressure. I do some of my best work when I know something is coming due tomorrow. Of course, personal projects don't come with due dates, so that isn't always applicable.

I'm absolutely terrible at finding motivation on my own really for things - I mean deadlines I can work to like they are nothing and pump out a lot of great stuff very quickly.. love having deadlines. But can't really set a deadline on myself... cause it just never gets stuck to, so one of the biggest things that im working on at the moment to push motivation is getting other people involved for deadline purposes.

Like if you have friends that code etc or artists who you could get to work with, or even people to just test the product, going to these (even if its just 1 person) and giving them dates you will have new features for / new things for them to test.

Its near enough to just setting a deadline for yourself, except you actually have someone there to help enforce it, or a couple of people depending on how many you get involved plus added benefit is you end up with several testers ;o

I will grant you cant always do that, but on hobby projects they dont tend to be top secret to a point you cant even get friends to test them

I tried working on this at work. The time restraint of lunch seems to be working for now. I'll see how I can apply everything else. I really want to keep this going.

1. Have constant working hours (a specific time of day)

2. Have a deadline (actually several deadlines for different stages of the project)

3. Release as soon as possible (releasing your first game does miracles to motivation :D)

I always found the Pomodoro technique worked well on me. The simple way to describe it is "set a timer for 25 minutes, work for that time, and then take a 5 minute break. Repeat."

For some reason, the promise of the work being time-limited helps get me into the mood for working; and at the end of 25 minutes, I often don't even want to stop anyway.

I have two kids in age of range 3 - 7, so there are distractions all the time - doing stuff on weekends are only possible when i am fully alone, which do not happen a lot.

Therefore most of the time i do private projects at 8 pm after the work when the kids are at least in the process of sleeping. But this may get interrupted with other distractions, like showing movies, playing games, housework, etc. Especially playing games kills a lot time... but well its fun... Maybe i should just uninstall all games from my dev-machine...

Regards motivation, i lose this very fast when i hang on problems for too long. This increases expotentially when there are things which dont work regardless what i do. This is the reason why i never finished a single game since i started programming over 20 years ago, but i can make prototypes at least.. At work this seems to not happen to me, i just sit down and figure out a solution always. But there i have much more time and can focus much better.

In addition when i code i do it for much too long - most until midnight and this is very bad for my health, getting not much sleep. Therefore the idea from Kylotan seems great, i will try that.

On 09/07/2017 at 4:59 PM, LAURENT* said:

What I work on personal projects I work on them whenever I feel like it. I want to change that habit but it hasn't been easy.

Don't throw all the work right away! Your R-mode brain (background brain processes) might give you some good ideas in weirdest and most unexpected moments. Tho you probably cannot kick in and start working on it - the habit you want to change, it's good to write down the ideas.

On 09/07/2017 at 4:59 PM, LAURENT* said:

I've increase my discipline to diet exercise and sleep consistently but that was training to not do something.

That's a start.

Training myself to actively do stuff has been much harder.

Because it is!

On 09/07/2017 at 4:59 PM, LAURENT* said:

What are your techniques for sitting down and really getting to work without a distractions?

You already have some kind of habit - which you're looking to change - and that's difficult because your brain is already wired in one way. Changing diet/exercise/sleep habit is a good start but it's only a start - since those are most primitive human actions/habits - thus most easy to alter.

For this specific situation, I would suggest meditation, 5 to 10 minutes, prior and after to your selected period for the work. First, disable all notifications and distractions you might possibly have and can spare to silence (wi-fi off, no mail popups, etc). Second, sit, lay, walk, stand, whatever, and just breathe and focus on breathing - set a timer to, at first 5, then after a couple of times, for 10 minutes - time you would focus and think only about your breathing - disbarring every other thought. Afterwards, kick off the work. The intro and outro meditation sessions would be like an entry/exit guidance to the brain to/from some different state. Do this in a consistent time of a day and benefits can only go up.

The goal here is to focus your attention and to train it. The 30-60 min distraction free work-session won't help you if you have the monkey mind. You, also, should align your time to your tasks, instead of tasks to your time available (do 1 task for 40 minutes - instead of 1.3 tasks for a 60-minute session).

I think that "what is pushing you away from what you are doing?" is more fitting.

There're .·. 3 .·. things that will get you back to work. It's really easy and it's 100% effective.

1) Get in a difficult situation .·.
2) Get away from social networks, media, and such .·.
3) Get surrounded with mind-liked people that is doing and talking what you talk and do .·.

The fourth one... becoming something like an eunuch which I don't recommend at all.

I try and set a specific time to do work. That way, I can plan in front of it to make sure I don't get distracted when that time comes.