At Barcamp Bangalore 10 on Saturday, I talked about GTD, Pomodoro and Productivity: NOTE: If you have trouble viewing the web version, there is also a PDF version of my slides. I was nervous when preparing for this talk because it is not a concrete topic, it’s something abstract and perhaps even illusive for many people, so when I started off my session, I asked people to set aside their cynicism for half an hour, I then established some source credibility, explained my view of how I look at productivity, success and happiness, and how GTD and Pomodoro tie into all this. The presentation above is quite self-explanatory, so I’ll not repeat that again, except for the demo-on-whiteboard part where I did a live session about how to do Pomodoro. (photo by @the100rabh) The session went surprisingly well, and most people grokked what I was explaining, which I’m still very surprised about. I guess part of it is because (1) the audience was so interactive and asked questions and (2) most people in the audience have already tried experimenting with todo lists and GTD, so it is a problem they were already facing, so they assimilated what I was saying very quickly. (photo by @anenth) The best part about Barcamp is that I got to talk about a personal obsession of mine and I would have otherwise probably never gotten a chance to discuss such a topic in-person with other people who are interested in this topic. Some of the feedback on my session: It was even more fun to hear from people when days after the conference, they were actually trying out the Pomodoro technique: http://twitter.com/kaushalgoa/statuses/80498975857324032 There were many other good sessions in Barcamp that I liked, I especially loved the sessions about the Namma Cycle project and about ShreeKumar’s adventures and how to survive while doing a yatra across the country, talking the locals, etc. And I really do hope that the Namma Cycle project takes off – Murali who effused passion when talking about it has shown a lot of progress already – got sponsorship, got government buy-in, and is starting off at Bangalore University and has big dreams about turning Bangalore into a cycling city. That seems to be already under way, with the new cycle stand near M G Road. Overall, even my non-techie wife thoroughly enjoyed the day and was inspired by the people she met at Barcamp. And that really says it all for me on how much I enjoyed going to Barcamp again. Special thanks to SAP Labs India for hosting the Barcamp in their beautiful campus and the great lunch as well. And not to forget, all the organizers of BCB10, kudos to you guys for making it happen! P.S. Regarding the Quantified Self phenomenon, I highly recommend reading the New York Times article by Gary Wolf on The Data Driven Life. Update: Just remembered a related old article of mine – Creativity and Organization is Impact”.

1. Have a list of things to do.
2. Pick one thing to work on. Start clock.
3. When tired, stop clock. Take a break.

It worked because of two reasons:

1. Observing yourself led to the Hawthorne Effect
2. Time spent per day was a quantifiable measure of productivity.

Simple.

It worked quite well for more than six months, but it just fizzled out for me. I couldn’t explain why at that time.

In retrospect, I think it was because of a few problems:

1. It did not solve procrastination. When I knew it was a big task, I would just delay getting started because I had put pressure on myself to not pause the clock early once it was started.
2. It did not help me stay focused for long. I would lose enthusiasm every few days because I would feel drained.
3. It was easy to lose track that I was doing time tracking! For example, I would be focusing on an action item, and when something urgent came up, I would just switch to that and would have forgotten about the running clock.
4. After a few months, it was not satisfactory enough to just look at a number at the end of the day and say “I’ve been productive today.” It just wasn’t doing the trick any more.
5. If a task was big and could not get completed that day, I would often feel demotivated and frustrated rather than happy about having put effort on the task.

Many people had commented on that article suggesting that I try out the Pomodoro technique. After six months, I did visit that website, but reading “Work in units of 25 minutes, with 5 minutes break in-between” did not stir up my enthusiasm. Same goes for reading the official book.

Then I happened to notice on the Pragmatic Programmers website that they had a book out on the same topic called “Pomodoro Technique Illustrated” by Staffan Nöteberg.

I have a high degree of trust in the quality of the PragProg books, so I blindly bought the ebook, downloaded and read it. It turned out to be one of the best books I have ever read.

There are plenty of reasons why I loved the book, and having written a couple of books myself, I wish I could write a book like this one – it has a fabulous approach of one page per topic which forced the author to be concise yet insightful, it is backed by extensive research as indicated by the references to other books in the footnotes, it has an engaging experience via the usage of sketches which presents the topic at hand in a fun spunky manner, and generally speaking, I really liked it’s whole “no fluff, just stuff” approach to topics.

And I have not even mentioned the content of the book itself. The second chapter “Context” alone is worth reading this book for. It explains a lot of the psychology on why the Pomodoro technique is designed the way it is. It was a powerful motivator for me to try out the technique and consequently experience the benefits.

First, let’s explain the name “Pomodoro”, it’s the Italian word for “tomato.” This name was used because Francesco Cirillo, the creator of this technique, used his kitchen timer which was in the shape of a tomato.

Now back to the book… let’s take what’s wrong with the simple ‘time tracking’ approach mentioned at the start of this article and add a few extra steps that the Pomodoro technique has and show how it provides benefits.

The first problem with simple time tracking is fizzling out of energy because of pressure on oneself to work for long uninterrupted hours. Our lizard brain just cannot keep doing that for long, so you split time into units of 25 minutes with breaks:

1. Have list of things to do (the “Activity Inventory” sheet).
2. Pick one to work on. Start clock.
3. Stop after 25 minutes (one pomodoro). Relax your body and mind, for 5 minutes (break).
4. After 4 pomodori, take a longer break of 15-30 minutes.

As Staffan notes in the book (Page 56):

During your breaks, you’re not allowed to think about the previous Pomodoro or about the next Pomodoro. Don’t make important phone calls or start writing important emails. Your brain needs to absorb the last 25 minutes of challenging thinking.

If your stress system is never neutralized by mental recreation, you’ll notice a number of symptoms. The thinking system in the brain stem is affected, as well as the senses of the limbic system and in the end your biological rhythms. For example, your sleep might be affected.

At chronic stress levels, the capacity of your working memory and your ability to concentrate will fall. The joy of working will be transformed into anxiety – inspiration is altered to irritation.

This rhythm of 25 minute units leads to a sustainable pace (Page 74):

Overview and control are the opposite of flow and deep creative-thinking processes. You can’t see the big picture and focus on details at the same time. Your focus will benefit from a process where you minimize the points where you have to sort and allocate priorities. But you need to do both. And you also need recreation time on a regular basis in order to absorb and recharge. So, you have three mental states to switch between. You alternate between them, but what triggers the mental state change?

I use three hats: the recreation hat, which is a jester’s hat; the working hat, which transforms me into the lion who is 100 percent focused on hunting the antelope; and the strategy hat, which makes me feel like a king when I’m sorting and deciding what to do during the next work iteration.

I come to work wearing the recreation hat. I put on the strategy hat and choose what activity to focus on. Then I put on the work hat, wind up the clock, and begin to focus. The clock rings after 25 minutes, which reminds me to put on the recreation hat. After a short break, I put on the strategy hat, and so on.

This timebox schedule that interleaves to focus, to prioritize, and to rest gives me a sustainable pace.

The second problem is that this a bit too lax in that there is no race to finish something, there is no goals. So let’s start every day with a subset of the todo list and make a commitment to oneself to finish that subset on that day with the caveat that it is okay if we don’t accomplish it:

1. Have list of things to do (the “Activity Inventory” sheet).
2. Consult your priorities and make a list on what to work on today (the “To Do Today” sheet)
3. Pick an activity from the To Do Today sheet to work on. Start clock.
4. Stop after 25 minutes (one pomodoro). Relax your body and mind for 5 minutes (break).
5. After 4 pomodori, take a longer break of 15-30 minutes.

As Staffan says in the book (Page 51):

Distinguishing between the Activity Inventory (a traditional to-do list) and the To Do Today (an extracted commitment) is a compulsory strategy for doing the right thing, getting started now, and putting optimum effort into your work. It gives you clear goals and personal control.

The third problem is that there is frustration when a task is not finished on a given day because the task is so big. So we break down how long the task will take and focus on that as well as finishing the task:

1. Have list of things to do (the “Activity Inventory” sheet) plus number of pomodori you estimate for each task.
2. Consult your priorities and make a list on what to work on today (the “To Do Today” sheet)
3. Pick an activity from the To Do Today sheet to work on. Start clock.
4. Stop after 25 minutes (one pomodoro). Mark one pomodoro completed for the task on the To Do Today sheet. Relax your body and mind for 5 minutes (break).
5. After 4 pomodori, take a longer break of 15-30 minutes.

This gives the physical pleasure of marking a X on successful completion of a pomodoro. This also means it can help measure our progress on whether we are on track to finish the task in the estimated number of pomodori.

As Staffan says (Page 95):

Planning based on estimates makes your commitment for the day more realistic, and as a result, your motivation will improve. Recording the number of completed Pomodoro every day gives you a good understanding of your Pomodoro velocity.

So far so good, but how do I know whether I’m improving myself day over day? Now we shall add tracking to the technique:

1. Have list of things to do (the “Activity Inventory” sheet) plus number of pomodori you estimate for each task.
2. Consult your priorities and make a list on what to work on today (the “To Do Today” sheet)
3. Pick an activity from the To Do Today sheet to work on. Start clock. Mark every internal interruption with an apostrophe next to the task name and mark every external interruption with a dash.
4. Stop after 25 minutes (one pomodoro). Mark one pomodoro completed for the task on the To Do Today sheet. Relax your body and mind for 5 minutes (break).
5. After 4 pomodori, take a longer break of 15-30 minutes.
6. At the end of each day, note down statistics that you are interested in w.r.t. your performance for today in the Records sheet.

Of course, this tracking only works if you make sure that each pomodoro is atomic (Page 61):

Never switch activities in the middle of a Pomodoro. If you finish an activity halfway through a Pomodoro, spend the rest of the time over-learning. For example, if I finish early, I review what I have done, I repeat what I have learned, I see whether I can enhance my work, or I note new conclusions on paper—until the kitchen timer rings.

So, you’re not allowed to impulsively switch activities in the middle of a Pomodoro. In fact, just having the option to switch in the middle is a recurring disturbance. You can’t just stop in the middle of a Pomodoro and take a break either. Then you will lose the rhythm. And since the stopped Pomodoro was shorter, it will not be compatible – in terms of tracking – with other Pomodori.

Examples of statistics include basic things like number of pomodori you committed to at the start of day versus the actual number of pomodori spent.

It can go as comprehensive as you wish, for example take interruptions we tracked during each pomodoro – we can track the average number of internal interruptions (your mind wanders) per pomodoro, the average number of external interruptions (somebody at work asks you something or you get a call) per pomodoro, what time of the day you get most interruptions, how long into each pomodoro you get your first distraction, and so on.

The point is to keep it simple and measurable. And something that motivates you to be productive each day. You should have a little ceremony but not too much otherwise it becomes self-defeating.

There is a LOT more to this than meets the eye and this is where Staffan’s book makes a difference. I would highly recommend reading this book. I’m making a mental note to myself to make this book one of the most important books that I will make my kids read and practice when they are in school. It is a valuable life survival tool that I feel they must learn at an early age (the next generation is going to be even more competitive!).

The best part is that I can fit GTD and Pomodoro techniques together. I remember reading a comment somewhere which said “GTD helps you answer what to do. Pomodoro helps you answer how to do it.”

Last, but not the least, the important thing to keep in mind is that Pomodoro technique forces you to adopt good habits. In more technical terms, “conditioned reflexes are key.” The act of marking X against an action, the act of crossing an action item when it is done, the act of making your brain instantly focused at the start of a Pomodoro (as well as the ticking sound of the clock, if you’re inclined), etc. they all help you adopt good habits. And I personally believe that good habits are the secret behind most successful people.

As Staffan says in the book (Page 48):

First prioritizing and then focusing on the most important activity will make you feel safe and sound. Otherwise, your focus will constantly be disturbed by questions like “Am I really doing the most important thing now?” At the start of my day, for instance, I first look at the whole backlog and pick the most important activity. Then I stick to it for a short timebox, before I reevaluate whether it’s still the most important one. In my mind I replace “I must finish” with “Where can I start?” and I replace “This project is so big and important” with “I can take one small step.”

…

Without the Pomodoro technique, figuring out how to start each workday can be hard. You might feel like you have a billion things and you can’t possibly do everything simultaneously. So, you never really start, and suddenly it’s lunch time.

On a related note, there are variants to this technique, they can be called Kanban or they can be called GTCD but I hope you get the gist of why this technique works.

If you’re looking for tools, I would suggest these two:

• For Linux and Windows – Focus Booster app
• For Mac – The Pomodoro tray item – I like this one because it uses the Mac’s built-in voice feature to make announcements of the start and end of a Pomodoro.

Just in case you were curious, I revised the book this time in 5 pomodori, and wrote this blog post in 5 pomodori

So what are you waiting for, go read the book now! And do write in about how the Pomodoro technique has helped you.

Update : “We believe what we want to believe, so it’s better to get data” — B J Fogg in an interview with Ramit Sethi – I guess this is the most succinct answer to when people ask me why use the Pomodoro technique

I find it surprising on how little time coders spend on their development environment (the “dev env”). And especially, I find it amusing that I can find, refactor and test code way faster than the Netbeans IDE users in my office, with just a shell and Vim setup.

So why is a good dev env necessary? Because we do searching, refactoring, editing and updating of code much more than appending fresh code, and this also applies to code that you wrote half an hour ago, because you will want to quickly refactor it when a new constraint, a new requirement, a new design or a new idea comes to your mind.

I learned this lesson while I was writing my Vim book. Since then, I have been investing quite a bit of time on my vimrc file, heavily customized to my liking.

To give one very quick example – I like the cursor to always be at the middle of the window (as opposed to at the bottom of the screen when you’re scrolling down), so that I can see the lines of code before and after the current line. To achieve this, you simply set scrolloff=999 and you’re done. A one-line setting, but it makes a world of difference in usage.

Extrapolate this to dozens of customizations and you have just optimized your environment for lesser time at the keyboard, lesser time fighting the editor, and more time on the actual code. You do not want to break your flow of thought because you’re unable to quickly switch between the right files (say, between the controller and the view files), and so on. [1]

These customizations are stored in .vim and .bashrc files, collectively referred to as “dotfiles”. I have been asked quite a few times by readers of my book to share my dotfiles, but I was not comfortable to share it because I felt it was too hacked up and did not have a good “base”.

So when I came across bash-it and vim-addon-manager, I knew they were good foundations and a good excuse for me to overhaul my bash and vim setups.

And lo, behold, my dotbash and dotvim repos (on GitHub).

These are my actual working environments at office and on my personal laptop, so if you don’t agree with some of my defaults, fork away.

Now, on to what is interesting about my setup…

What bash-it provides

bash-it provides great defaults and aliases, right from .. as a shortcut for cd .. and ... for cd ../.. to bash completion setups for git, rake, etc., and of course, a gorgeous theme to use:

The best part though is it’s neat organization into aliases, completion, custom, lib, plugins, themes and template folders. That makes a big difference in the long run, for the same reasons why a cleanly modularized codebase is better than one giant script.

And it will get various new features over time contributed by the community, example, completion of server names for ssh.

What vim-addon-manager provides

vim-addon-manager provides a super-simple way to install plugins into separate folders and then use them all, instead of lumping all of them together into a .vim folder. Just add the name of a new Vim plugin to the list of plugins you want to load, and it will automatically fetch the plugin and install it for you! This makes it easy to play around with new plugins as well as a simple way of having the latest version of the Vim plugins.

I use vim-addon-manager, but there are alternatives – others prefer pathogen.vim and there is also Vimana which gives you an apt-get-like command to search for Vim plugins. Choose your weapon.

There are caveats to vim-addon-manager, mainly that all plugins don’t seamlessly work with it. For example, I couldn’t get pyflakes.vim to work with it, so I had to unzip pyflakes into my regular .vim directory to use it.

My Bash customizations

Ever since I saw gemedit, I wanted something like that for Python eggs, and I realized that it was easy because Python modules have a __file__ attribute that I can use, and I created my own egg_edit command to do the same trick. Similarly, I have my own sync command with the settings that I prefer, etc.

tmux setup

tmux is a modern alternative to GNU Screen which is a common arsenal in any Unix coder’s war-chest. I prefer to use tmux because it makes it easy to script sessions which makes it super-easy to start a new session working on a project. For example:

Put this as flask-boilerplate-tmux.bash into the custom folder of your bash-it/dotbash folder, and then you can run flask-boilerplate-tmux any time to start a new session to work on the flask-boilerplate codebase! ( Update : Check out Teamocil which will allow you to do the same with a simple yaml config file )

I have a highly customized tmux configuration which sets many good default settings, especially starting the numbering of the windows from 1 (switching between 0 and 1 is painfully because they are at the opposite ends of the keyboard).

autojump

A good Bash plugin to use is autojump which monitors which directories you spend most of your time in, and then makes it easy to jump to your most favorite directories using a simple j command.

Don’t forget to use jumpstat to see which are those directories. Also, bash-it/dotbash provides a command called rh that does something similar.

Note that I have started using autojump only recently, so I don’t have as much experience using it as the other tools.

My Vim customizations

I have a fairly customized vimrc, right from changing the status line to providing shortcuts like :A to copy the full buffer to the clipboard and :B for vice-versa, which I find it very useful in situations such as I am writing this article in Vim and can quickly copy/paste into WordPress when I am done with the draft. I also have a \o shortcut to open a URL that the cursor is on, and many other goodies.

Vim plugins I use

There are three Vim plugins which are must-have for me:

First is command-t.vim which is a “fuzzy finder” to quickly jump to another file under the current directory.

Second is ack.vim which allows you to intelligently grep your source code for patterns and then jump to each occurrence in a split-window fashion.

My favorite feature is that I can search my code with :Ack --python or :Ack --ruby and it will ignore all the JavaScript libraries which can have the same variable or function names.

Third is conque shell which allows you to to create a split window which can be any interpreter prompt.

The best part is that you can use a shortcut \e (assuming the default mapleader) to send the visually selected text to the interpreter prompt as if it was copy-pasted and it will execute it! This is incredibly helpful when you want to iterate the development of a multi-line function or fragment of code and you find extracting that code to a separate file and editing that file to be a pain (The interpreter prompts are designed for playing around with one-liners, they are simply not built for multi-line code).

I have the following lines in my vimrc to quickly create ConqueShell sessions:

command Shell :set nolist | ConqueTermSplit bash
command PythonShell :set nolist | ConqueTermSplit python

So, I quickly run PythonShell to create a new session.

Setups by others

For other Vim setups, see the Janus repo on GitHub which is used by Yehuda Katz himself. You’ll find many more on the dotfiles website.

Summary

I’m hoping this article will help Vimmers and Bash users to broaden their usage and help them be more productive, the same intention behind my Vim book:

“I used to play with vim for years. I think this book would have to save me much time if it was written 10 years ago! Anyways, thank you for this amazing work you are doing.”

– turky_samy (at) hotmail (dot) fr

If you like what you have read so far, then go ahead and install dotbash and install dotvim.

Bottom line:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

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[1] The flip side though is that I have been told “You’re the most mysterious guy in this office. No one understands what you’re doing when we see you coding.” Heh. Hopefully, it is not as mysterious after this article.

Listening to Seth Godin say “What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship” reminded me of the The Cult of Done manifesto:

If you find the image inconvenient to read, here’s the text:

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

My favorite is Point 6.

I was reading the The Favorite iPhone Apps of Five Geek Rock Stars and did not find it useful, because it was mostly about games or things that apply to people only in USA. So I was wondering if I had my own list.

Stanza

My most favorite application is the Stanza app for reading ebooks.

It’s because of Stanza that I actually started to read more! Mostly because I can read a book anywhere and any time I want to. I also discovered some great books such as Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse because I could explore and download in a few clicks.

Maps built-in application

Google started giving driving directions in India a few months back and it rocks!

RunKeeper

The ability to see your pace at exactly every moment during a run is very handy. And I don’t have to carry any extra device because I’m already carrying my iPhone which also happens to be my iPod which I listen to while running. And the best part of the RunKeeper Pro app is that it announces by voice the distance and speed every 5 minutes which gives me the boost I need if I slowed down.

RememberTheMilk and Evernote

The RememberTheMilk app is one of the slickest iPhone apps I’ve used, but I started making daily todo lists which is a bad idea, so I wanted to think in terms of notes instead of lists, so I started using the Evernote app which was exactly what I was looking for.

The best part about Evernote is that I always have a notepad to jot things down whenever I have a thought. And after I started using Evernote, I realized this happens more often than you think! And it has gotten more useful with the 3.0 version of the app. For example, imagine searching for notes by the location where you created the note! Or make voice notes. Or saving photos of an article in a magazine and searching for the text in that article inside Evernote. Or sending a link to Evernote via email. And so on.

There is also the official WordPress app for writing blog posts or tinkering with drafts.

MobileStudio and Dropbox

Whenever I need some files that I might need to use on-the-go, I transfer it via FTP to the MobileStudio app and then access it on my iPhone.

For example, in one incident, I was able to quickly open the tickets I had saved as a PDF on my phone since I didn’t have the actual printout.

Oh, and having Dropbox access online via the browser means I have all my files accessible any time.

TimeJot

See my earlier time tracking article.

tv.burrp.com

If you thought there was never interesting on TV, just visit tv.burrp.com and find out what’s on TV right now. It’s very very useful.

burrp.com

Find restaurants on-the-go. Once, a friend and myself were in Koramangala looking for a place to eat, and we discovered Fiorano Ristorante via burrp, and had nice authentic Italian food.

Reach people

I never have to worry about how to reach a person any more, I have all the methods – phone call, SMS, email, Skype, IM, Twitter. You name it, we got it.

TED Talks at night

It’s hard to turn off the music or movie and force myself to sleep. So I end up taking my iPhone to bed and watching a TED talk or two before sleeping.

Ambiance

There’s actually an app for listening to rain sounds or the crackling of a campfire or sounds of that sort. It comes in really handy when you just want to shut out all the noises outside and you’re not in a mood to listen to music. It gives you the background noise that you always wanted.

WordBook

Having a very handy dictionary on your fingertips is handy when you want to check if the word that you’re using means what you think it means.

Torch

Yeah, the Torch app comes in handy these days because of the frequent power cuts in Bengaluru.

Wishlist: ngpay

The one app that is missing on the iPhone is an ngpay app. I once called up their customer support and asked if they had plans for an iPhone app and they told me that “Sorry sir, the iPhone doesn’t support third-party applications.” I was speechless.

There’s an app for that

There are a lot of apps out there to use.

I’m just glad that I finally got a kinda-PDA device that I always wanted. Now I never get bored waiting for someone because I can actually spend that time finding out the latest news and I can check Wikipedia for the members of a rock band during a discussion with friends

Attention Span

I started using Twitter as an experiment, and it was the first and only social network I really participated in. It was great because I actually made new friends that I went on trips with, got the opportunity to follow the thoughts of interesting people, and whenever I was in a quandary, I just had to holler a question and would get plenty of answers and advice in return.

But I was uneasy because I was feeling jaded. I thought it was because of the typical “overdoing it” reason, but there was more to it. It was affecting my ability to think critically/deeply about a subject.

Why am I thinking so much about a social network? As David Allen once said, “Pay attention to what has your attention.” And clearly, Twitter had more of my attention than it should have.

Since my attention span was reducing from books to blogs and then blogs to tweets, I was being converted from “from a thinker to a clicker”.

So I’ve gone back and started reading books and paying more attention to offline friends. And I’m not alone on this, many people have expressed similar opinions.

Getting your Fix

I think of this situation as getting your fix. Think smoking vs. coffee. Both are stimulants. Both are legal. But since smoking actually affects others, people have to go outside to indulge in it. Hence, it is less convenient. Probably that’s why there are more people addicted to coffee. Because it is more convenient. There is a sufficient barrier to smoking. Even though this analogy may not be true, consider reading blog posts vs. reading books. There is a sufficient barrier of attention to the latter, that is why more people prefer reading blog posts. It is more convenient. The same for reading blogs vs. tweets. The latter is more convenient. Then, going down this path, your ability to think becomes restricted to 140 characters. Twitter gives you that instant high that you published or read something, which means you lose persistence which is required for longer reading, hence tend to think a lot less and quick wins prevent you from going after bigger wins.

The problem with the shorter fix is that you will indulge in it more often and it will have lesser stimulation in the long run. Consider the difference between, say, having a 5-day 9-hour work week with 2-day weekends vs. having 6-hour work everyday with no weekend and no holidays. Which one would you prefer? This is how I argue that a book once in a while will give you more stimulation than a hundred tweets. For example, consider the signal-to-noise ratio – only tools like filtrr.com can filter out #ipl talk, etc. whereas a book would give a broad understanding about a particular subject. In the long run, it is more enriching to go deeper into subjects, not to be “restricted” to a buffet of subjects.

As a sort-of substitute for Twitter, I’ve shifted to a del.icio.us network. After all, most of Twitter is sharing links and delicious doesn’t have the downside of frivolous tweets. Also, delicious shows how many people have bookmarked a link giving another indicator whether something is worth reading or not, and even better, they are tagged appropriately so I immediately know the topic to expect for an article, instead of “This is cool <insert link>.”

The Attention Psychology

Let’s think about attention in terms of psychology, which I am trying to understand a little about from The Mouse Trap blog:

Maximizing utility

U = E x V (where U is utility of act; E is expectancy as to whether one would be able to carry the act and if so whether the act would result in desired outcome; and V is the Value (both subjective and objective) that one has assigned to the outcome.

Maximizing Predictability

While selecting an action we maximize reward and minimize punishment, basically we choose the maximal utility function; while choosing which stimuli to attend to we maximize our foreknowledge of the world and minimize surprises, basically we choose the maximal predictability function; we can even write an equivalent mathematical formula: Predictability P = E x R where P is the increase in predictability due to attending to stimulus 1 ; E is probability that stimulus 1 correctly leads to prediction of stimulus 2; and R is the Relevance of stimulus 2(information) to us. Thus the stimulus one would attend, is the one that leads to maximum gain in predictability. Also, similar to the general energy level of organism that would bias as to whether, and how much, the organism acts or not; there is a general arousal level of the organism that biases whether and how much it would attend to stimuli.

As per my understanding, the first part means that because we expect much utility about something, it’s perceived utility is higher, making it’s value higher. And because Twitter gives that dash of randomness that we desire, it’s utility is much higher than it really is.

The second part means that we want to know more about the world in order to have lesser surprises, and hence we tend to read more and more, especially if it is information that we perceive as relevant to us.

Bottom line: I question whether more and more information and more and more immediacy is really necessary/required for us?

Think of all the great things that have been achieved whether it is a motor engine or a music stereo, would it have been created if the to-be-creator was constantly distracted and with low attention span? Where is the time to get inspired if we’re always mentally tired?

Why Can’t We Concentrate?

I will finish up with excerpts from this excellent article on Salon called “Why Can’t We Concentrate?”:

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The Idea

A couple of months ago, I was going through a “productivity drought.” I used to repeatedly bounce between tasks. I couldn’t concentrate enough. Work was suffering.

I thought to myself “Just how bad is the situation? Can I quantify it?” Then I started using a very old and boring concept: the stop watch.

Only that I used an iPhone application called TimeJot which is specifically a time journalling application meant for this purpose.

The idea was pretty simple:

1. Have 5-7 different categories of projects and actions that I normally engage in. Everything else is not considered productive time.
2. “Projects and actions” are defined as anything that needs to be done, whether at office or home.
3. Every time I start on one of these activities, start the timer.
4. Every time I get distracted or switch to something that is not part of the task at hand, I stop the timer.
5. The most important thing is to keep the timer sacred. It is okay to be not productive, but it is not okay to lie to yourself. If the timer is on, you are working with full focus on the task at hand. If the timer is off, you’re on a break, do whatever you want.

The Results

I have been following these 4 simple steps and I have learned a lot about myself and it has had a profound effect on my productivity:

1. Realization of how many context switches I do per day! Because I have to stop the timer every time I get distracted, it became really clear on how many times I started switching browser windows! Now, I have (almost) stopped reading tech news websites during work hours and certainly stopped twittering.
2. I started analyzing and experimenting on how to increase the number of productive hours. One of the best things that worked for me was the switch off WiFi during the first two hours of work everyday. Once I disconnect myself from the global consciousness, I tend to focus on the task at hand. Once in the flow, it is not easy to lose that focus. So switching on WiFi access (which is of course required for regular work) later is okay.
3. Now that I had the data, I realized how much I’m glued to the computer. So I started restricting myself on weekends to spend less time in front of the computer and more time doing other activities. This resulted in two things: (1) Spending lesser number of hours at the computer but more focused hours and (2) Finally getting around to the big pile of books that are waiting to be read.
4. Realizing that I’m not investing time in learning new things at all.
5. Realizing that I waste too much time pondering and not enough time doing. But again, what is needed is moderation not elimination. It is these ponderings that round up my thinking and learning, after all.
6. Realizing that I am more productive if I wake up early but I just love being a night-owl. A hard problem to solve.
7. Learning that I work best when there are big chunks of work as opposed to many small things.
8. Learning that when I focus, I really really focus. But getting to that point is difficult. An important aspect to know about oneself, because once I started accepting that there is a warmup period of several days before I really become productive with a new task, I was fighting myself a little lesser and going with the flow.
9. I count exercise time also as productive time, so on the days that I cycle to work, I get a bonus one hour of productivity that day and I feel good! And this has the side-effect of encouraging me to go for running and cycling which has drastically gone down these days.
10. The data provided a stark picture on how much time I spend on non-important things and I started ruthlessly cutting down on all the distractions. And I could prove to myself that I was successful in this initiative only from the data.

That’s a lot of things that can be learned about yourself with a simple stop watch

It’s Not That Crazy

If you think it is crazy to be doing this, then did you know that Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress does time tracking as well?:

> “One of my favorite programs that we didn’t make is Rescue Time. It runs in the corner of my computer and tracks how much time I spend on different things. I realized that even though I was doing e-mail only a couple of minutes at a time, it was adding up to a couple of hours a day. So I’m trying to reduce that. I have a WordPress plug-in that filters all my messages based on the sender’s e-mail address — so high-priority e-mails go into one folder and the rest go into others. Tim Ferriss, who wrote The 4-Hour Work Week, advocates checking e-mail twice a week, but that is too severe for me. Instead, I’m trying to implement Leo Babauta’s approach from The Power of Less. He suggests small steps, like checking e-mail five times a day instead of 10. It’s like dieting: People who binge diet gain it all back. That happens to me with e-mail.”

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Here is a typical day of someone who sent this to Caterina Fake:

This style of working is explained further in “Don’t Multi-task When You Can Use Chunking”.

What does your day look like?

About six months ago, I had stopped reading all RSS feeds because I wasn’t managing my information input well. Over the past few months I was slowly creeping back into the same RSS habit and I didn’t like it.

The biggest problem for me was seeing that unread count number^*. It was intimidating and I quickly started procrastinating reading the articles, which was ironic, because we mostly read RSS feeds to procrastinate from doing real work

I thought to myself: “There must be a way to list all my favorite blogs and websites, I can add them and forget about it. Whenever I want to get updated, I just visit the page and read all the latest, and then go away again. There is no need to keep memory of how much I read and how much I did not read.”

I started looking at My Yahoo! to list the websites I follow. It allows to add RSS feeds and will show you the latest 5 posts from that RSS feed. But then, MyAlltop came along and solved it more elegantly for me:

• MyAllTop is easy to scan, i.e., read because of the newspaper-style 3 columns of blocks, compared to My Yahoo!’s big horizontal blocks (maybe there’s a way to get the layout of your liking, but I couldn’t find it).
• When you mouseover a link in Alltop/MyAlltop, it will show a few paragraphs from the article which makes it easy to discern whether the title is misleading or if the article is really interesting.
• The Alltop directory is very useful (which reminds me of the origins of Yahoo! – a directory of websites) in finding the best blogs on a particular topic, which is a harder problem than I imagined. I don’t know if Google Reader’s “bundles” had solved this problem, but I definitely find this a good resource.
• I used to regularly visit india.alltop.com to read the latest news but used to get annoyed by irrelevant-to-me blocks. Now I can just add the ones that I’m interested in to MyAlltop page.

In the end, I’ve switched from Google Reader to my.alltop.com/swaroopch and I’m finding it far more fun to read this way. This is also useful if you ever wondered what blogs I read, it’s all in one page.

If you have any other “How to control your information input” tips, please comment.

^* And if you wondered that I must be nuts to get bogged down by the unread count number, let me tell you that I’m not nuts, I’m actually a Inbox Zero freak. I tend to reach inbox zero on email every week regularly. If only I could say the same about my todo list…

Update on June 13, 2009: I wanted to try a new idea – to randomly see the list of feeds every time, so I ditched MyAllTop and wrote a small html file that uses Google AJAX Feeds API to display the feeds list. Let’s see how this experiment goes.

A big question that keeps coming up for an attention-deficit person like me is “How do you get into the flow?”

There are two things that work for me and I find them at loggerheads against each other. The problem is that it has been difficult to stick to either of them.

One is called being a night-owl, the other is called the MIT factor.

I love to work late nights. Life is completely undisturbed, you’re not going to get phone calls, there are no noises, nobody’s expecting email replies from you, nobody around to disturb you. All good.

But being nocturnal ain’t easy. Your whole life is thrown off-balance as well as your body’s natural cycle. Yet some of the best hackers I know are night-owls. They hack away their code and leave the rest to management. I’m not sure that’s a viable option for us in a startup where we do everything including working with many partner companies. Besides, I don’t wish it to go to such depths of imbalance, for example, I want to maintain my regular running but it is not possible when you wake up late. And running in the evenings on Bengaluru roads is defined as insanity. The struggle is productivity/flow vs. life balance.

The second is called “The MIT Factor.” Do the Most Important Task first thing in the morning. It’s that simple. Don’t think about what’s ahead in the day, don’t think about what bills are pending, don’t think about planning to reach office on time (just have a fixed deadline when you have to start getting ready and think no more about it). Just switch on your computer or take out your pen and paper as soon as you wake up and start working on it. The important thing is Don’t think. Just start working on it.

The problem with the second option is that if you don’t wake up early, you again end up in the daily grind where you may not get focus. And you need to have the discipline to immediately start working. Whatever you do at the start of the day sets the mood for the rest of the day. For example, you check email first thing in the morning? You’ll tend to do the same activity for the rest of the day.

The bottom line is I think there is a psychological concept where you have to load the entire problem, the entire domain on what you’re working on into your head and that takes time, say 15-20 minutes and then you suddenly start solving problems. But if you subconsciously know that you’ll get disturbed any time in those 15-20 minutes, the brain almost gives up and doesn’t think it’s worth putting in that investment to get into the flow if it is going to ultimately get disturbed. Is this true? I have no idea, just a theory that I’m beginning to believe (I can’t remember if I read this somewhere or just an opinion I’m forming for myself).

I wonder how other people approach this concept of “getting into the zone.”

Further reading:

• Flow in Psychology as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
• Geek to Live: Control your workday by Gina Trapani
• Disconnecting Distraction by Paul Graham – I’ve been applying some of the ideas here and so far I’ve had good success.
• Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm