How To Get More Done – HR hates me for this weird trick
How To Get More Done – HR hates me for this weird trick
I taught my brain that there is an instant reward at the beginning of every new work session.
Not sure about yours, but mine is terrible with rewards. It just can’t get enough of them. As a result, I can work more. 🤷♂️
So here’s how I get back to work multiple times daily, for 10+ hours a day.
Comes in handy if you’re running your own business, doing five side hustles while having a family, or simply have to clock in more hours to support your goals.
Okay, but why do we need tricks?
I work flexible hours.
I start working around 6 AM, take a long break at 11 AM, and then return at 2 PM and work until 5 PM. Those 3 hours after my break for a long time were the hardest for two reasons:
I’m most productive between 6 AM and 11 AM. In the afternoon, tasks that take one morning hour can take two to three times longer.
I feel I’m unproductive, which makes it even harder to work
Being a solo contractor & business owner, I never had the chance to talk to HR or my manager, do some counseling about my work-related fatigue, or how I should not feel tired while still working my ass off.
But I read a few books earlier this year highlighting simple truths about our brains. Our homo sapiens control centers have been this size for the past ~200 000 years and care about these things:
Reward & Pleasure (dopamine)
Threat Avoidance (amygdala)
Social Connection (oxytocin)
Reproduction
Status
See remote work on the list? Burnout? Imposter syndrome? TypeScript or Go?
That’s why you use tricks. For example, your brain needs pleasure, but pleasure hardly pays the bills. So, you give your brain a form of pleasure that eventually leads to work-related efforts.
Here’s mine.
I leave tasks unfinished at the end of a work session.
Here’s an example:
I’m refactoring an app. I move some files, and if I’m about to go on a break, I leave the errors that come up after the move unsolved:
These are easy errors to fix.
Your brain will scream at you.
This is easy. Get done with it and call it a day!
But this is the trick.
Close your laptop, walk away, and start your break.
When you come back, your brain will be:
Oh, I know how to solve these errors! And you know how I feel when I get something working!
It’s the classic programmer’s dopamine shot recipe.
That’s it.
I just 10x’d you.
No, but seriously, take breaks and take them often.
Sometimes, a walk is a better debugging tool than a memory profiler.
Do you have your “brain tricks”?
📰 Weekly shoutout
My 3 strategies to manage my workload (before reaching burnout in Big Tech) by
another brain thing that’s absolutely in our control. Excellent writing about managing and preventing exhaustion.5 Strategies for High-Availability Systems –
works on high-availability systems during his day job. He could go on all technical, but how he breaks down these complex things into understandable concepts is brilliant!3 Ways to Enhance Your Mental Health at Work [Part 2] the second part of last week’s article from
. Mental (and physical) health is not optional if you want to get ahead. Great read!
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I hate the idea of working x amount of hours. Sometimes those hours are just useless and you are just doing them to finish your day.
Very good post, Akos. Concise and to the point, no need to dress it up with noise
I don't know if you know about it, but that's what Hemmingway did with his writing.
“Learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. I always worked until I had something done, and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.” — Ernest Hemmingway
Great advice, breaks are so important for our physiology.
We use up a lot of brain resources when doing focus work, and some idle time can help us recover some of those resources.
I think it is something workplaces should implement as well, like some mandatory 10-minute breaks throughout the 8-hours workday