54: Each Day Counts with Greg DeKoenigsberg

Long time Red Hat colleague Greg DeKoenigsberg and I talk about managing our time–how we get off track and how we fight against letting it happen.

 

• Red Hat and Open Source Software
• In today’s world of “work” where we sit in a chair and look at a screen, it’s really easy to waste time
• Being on the lookout for those “tells” that give you an early-warning indicator that you’re on the path to wasting time
  • “Fake fortification”
  • Anxiety about our work and tasks to be completed
• Anxiety vs. procrastination vs. being in Flow
• Flow often happens when we are engaged in meaningful work
• Figuring out ways to get into flow states
  • Being able to see the bigger picture of tedious work will give us
  • Breaking things into smaller, achievable tasks
  • Reduce the amount of time you spend comparing yourself others
    • Accept that completing a particular task might take you six hours to complete because you break it into chunks compared to someone else that it comes naturally to
• Building habits around putting structures into place that protect us from doing stupid things with our time
• Working in time blocks (Pomodoros) was a game changer for Greg
• Holding back because we question whether it’s “worth it” or the best use of our time
• John & Greg’s geeky hacks for trying to stay focused
• Having your smartphone nearby is a distraction
• The compound affect of doing things over and over again
• The pros/cons of negative rewards

Resources

• Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday LifeFlow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Tilt365 character strengths assessment (John is certified in this tool and happy to go over it with you)
• Pomodoro technique
• Sand Timers for measuring work blocks and Pomodoros
• Thank You For Being Late by Thomas Friedman
• Bullet Journaling
  • Official Bullet Journal getting started page
  • Lifehacker dot journaling overview
  • Ryan McRae’s excellent resource guide to Bullet Journaling
• HBR: Having Your Smartphone Nearby Takes a Toll on Your Thinking
• Forest App
• Self Control website blocker for Mac
• Wait But Why

Credits

• Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund
• Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod
• Original photo source

All songs licensed under Creative Commons

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