Setting Beeminder goals for the number of hours worked on different projects has substantially increased my productivity over the past few months.
I’m very deadline-motivated: if a deadline is coming up, I can easily put in 10 hours of work in a day. But without any hard deadlines, it can take active willpower to work for more than 3 or 4 hours. Beeminder gives me deadlines almost every day, so it takes much less willpower now to have productive days.
(I’m working on a blog post about this currently, which I expect to have out in about two weeks. If I remember, I’ll add a link back to this comment once it’s out.)
Update: This strategy only worked for a few months before I got pretty burnt out; having non-negotiable deadlines every day eventually became more draining than motivating. Beeminder has still helped me a ton overall, but it’s very important to get the goals right and tweak them if they stop working!
Setting Beeminder goals for the number of hours worked on different projects has substantially increased my productivity over the past few months.
I’m very deadline-motivated: if a deadline is coming up, I can easily put in 10 hours of work in a day. But without any hard deadlines, it can take active willpower to work for more than 3 or 4 hours. Beeminder gives me deadlines almost every day, so it takes much less willpower now to have productive days.
(I’m working on a blog post about this currently, which I expect to have out in about two weeks. If I remember, I’ll add a link back to this comment once it’s out.)Update: This strategy only worked for a few months before I got pretty burnt out; having non-negotiable deadlines every day eventually became more draining than motivating. Beeminder has still helped me a ton overall, but it’s very important to get the goals right and tweak them if they stop working!