zushi's place

From every productivity strategy I've tried (and I've tried quite a few!), the most useful productive strategies have been by far to increase startup friction for things I don't want to do, and decrease startup friction on things I want to do.

I used to spend more time than I would like on Twitter. To change that, I intentionally made my password some random string that I don't write down, and log out after each browsing session. This way, I have to go through the painful password recovery process each time I want to log in. Eventually I don't log in to Twitter anymore.

Recently I picked up piano again after a 1-year hiatus, and it has replaced a lot of rote gaming as something I do for break. The impetus has been moving the digital piano from the living room to my next to my computer, directly next to where I work. This way, the piano is by me for about 8-12 hours a day. This actually didn't work for a few months and I got as far as unplugging the piano, intending to move it back, but eventually worked out nicely.

What surprises me a lot is how far you can take this strategy. It's almost always further than you expect it to be able to, both in the types of habits you can apply it to, and the complexity of obstacles you can set up to make it harder to do unproductive things. My Facebook account requires me to log in to a second email account, which is needed to log in to a third email account, to be able to log in. My phone has a byzantine process that I have to go through to unlock access to news sites. And in a classic fashion, I don't have candy in the house (and often throw them away if I get a batch somehow). This kind of thing often requires a one-time investment to eradicate habits that eat up just as much time every day.

And there's something about utilizing opportunities when I have willpower to control my behaviors when I am low on willpower that is quite neat and appealing to me. Although I've had successes as well with effortful productivity tricks (say GTD), after some significant recent successes I think I should just default to this strategy whenever possible. The process can get to be incredibly hacky (like having 3 emails accounts), but the results are almost always impeccable.

— Categorized under: #workflow, #productivity