quartz/content/Essays/productivity.md

title	tags
How You can Increase your Productivity	productivity incomplete essay

This article is split into four sections:

• #General Advice, psychological or other hacks that I've experienced success with.
• #Easy Tools, pieces of software or other tools that aren't the best option strictly, but they take very little time to set up.
• #Medium Tools, something that anyone who's willing to invest a little time learning on-linux or some other foreign computer concept can do.
• #Tools for Hackers, which are for power-user use and not for the faint of heart. Expect to configure until 3am, or to create your entire own ecosystem along a few guidelines I give you.

You'll notice that the more performance has a direct relationship to price, and complexity has an inverse relationship to price. Something that you set up that's highly complex is likely to be free, but easy and user-friendly tools may be paid, with price increasing the more performant and feature-rich they are.

General Advice

• Go to sleep. Seriously, do it. I think that mood is deeply related to productivity. Studies have shown that your day-to-day mood corresponds to the regularity of your sleep schedule.
• This more applies if your work/school has a high time commitment or a penchant for overtaking other things:
  • Be logical about your hobbies.
    • Logically think about a few of the things you do for fun and designate those as your "hobbies."
    • Start thinking about your days in terms of accounting for work time, adulting time, and hobby time for one of your explicit hobbies.
    • At work from 8-6? Great. Is your gym or other recreational space only open at a certain time? Block it out for that hobby. Anything else can come in between.

Easy Tools

On your computer

Fun and helpful, but ultimately constrained by the fact that you can only see them from one device in today's world.

• TAPE: a project manager for the creative minded. Cross platform. $5, less than a Starbucks, and you're supporting a really neat studio.
• JRNL, the one by Blarfnip: Similar idea to TAPE, but for daily journal entries. I'm not sure how good creating a habit of sitting down at your computer is though. Windows only. Also $5.

On the Web / Otherwise Cross-Platform or Collaborative

• Notion: Feature-rich collaborative knowledge sharing space for whatever you desire. Personal notes and goals? Digital autogardening? Project collaboration? Done. Free tier along with a pricing scheme. Free Plus account with a student email.
• Zotero: Free collaboration-optional research tracker. Projects/zotero-lexis-plus

Medium Tools

WIP

Tools for Hackers

WIP