Hacker News Reader

Strangely, the one thing that worked for me doesn't appear to be on this list:

The resistance to starting a task is geometrically proportional to the SIZE of the task.

So I try to break everything down into tasks that take no more than a few minutes. I wouldn't have tasks like "Write FooBar architecture document", but rather "Write FooBar intro", or "sketch connection diagram on paper" or "copy connection diagram to Visio/Draw.io".

View on HN

The article does mention your trick:

> My solution was to approach a project by turning it into as many tiny steps as possible. That way I could get a few really easy wins under my belt. For example, each step would be a task such as "Search for ______ on Google" or "Have a conversation with ______." Crossing things off your to-do list gives your brain a happy little dopamine hit, even if the tasks are tiny—it keeps your motivation up and your excuses down.

You're right. I think one of my other tricks failed me: reading paragraph headings, following by the minimum number of sentences per heading required to get its gist.

This is literally the first tip he describes in the article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com