Hacking productivity with arbitrary constraints

February 6th, 2009 in Weblog

I’m taking a few professional days this month, something I do a couple of times a year to work on pet projects and learn new tools. It’s easy to burn through these fun development days, though. There are just too many projects floating around my head, too many tools to learn, and too many distractions. So today’s hack is about how to use arbitrary limits to actually get shit done.

I learned this technique in a writing workshop, but it applies to art, photography, coding, and hacking in general. It goes like this:

  1. List 5 simple points about a thing that you think you can do in an hour or less
  2. Write, paint, draw, or hack away at those 5 simple things
  3. After an hour stop and put it away
  4. No, really, put it away
  5. Take a break, and goto 1, but on a new topic

NOTE: You can only return to a topic after a few hours (and a few breaks).

Restricting yourself in time and breadth is a tool to focus your thinking and use of time. It pushes you dig into smaller problems and finish them, instead of getting lost in the hugeness of what you actually want to do. Keep it small and simple, and don’t worry about the next 100,000 lines of code.

And now my first hour is up: it’s time to move on to the next hack.