Ask HN: How do you complete work faster? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you complete work faster?

4 pointsdrBonkers4 comments

I want to become faster at getting things done. I execute well on assignments, but I think I'm slower than the average individual.

I believe this is an obstacle to my ability to contribute to society in two ways:

1. Achieving any pursuit takes longer, which limits my cumulative, long term potential.

2. The longer projects run, the more likely I am to lose focus and interest in it. If what takes others 12 hours takes me 18 hours, then I have less energy and effort to expend on a third of the project. I believe this effect compounds with my aforementioned slowness — I can either slap-dash the last 6 hours with my low interest/energy, or take even longer than the extra 6 hours in order to ensure I do it right.

One strategy I employ is to estimate how long a task might take a normal person, then try to beat or meet that time. Outside of scoping unknowns and unknown-unknowns, this works. However, it is exceptionally energy intensive; I may only keep that level of intensity and focus for 3 – 5 hours a day. And, quite honestly, it makes me hate the work.

What do you think about to accelerate the completion of your work? Have you ever read any books or resources on the subject that might help others? Am I cursed with a cognitive retardation and that slows me down? Give it to me straight, doc.

I'd focus on looking at things that are blocking flow states. If you can enter a flow state, you may find you're working faster on average.

- Consider starting your day by hand-writing a bullet pointed lists of tasks or things that are stressing you, including life stuff. Writing them out helps you feel that you have control over them, and you no longer have them rattling around in the back of your head. Leave the list alone, it's not a to-do list. You'll focus more easily.

- Related: if that kind of works for you. Consider starting your day by writing a page or two in a journal, just about whatever's in your head. Once you empty that out and all the feelings around that stuff, it will be easier to get down to business and enter a flow state.

- Taking breaks is really important and taking frequent breaks when it feels natural works well, at least for me. Take vacation regularly.

- Get plenty of high-quality sleep. This is a big one. Once you start paying attention to it, you notice really quickly what a big impact sleep has on your mood, happiness, and output the following day.

- Use noise-cancelling headphones and playlists made for focus.

And remember to be kind to yourself.

In general, we focus on the things that bother us about ourselves when we compare ourselves to others. We don't pay attention to the positives. So you probably aren't seeing the sides of your work that make you excellent or how you contribute in ways other people can't.

Assuming you're talking about engineering tasks, here is some miscellaneous advice to help you work more efficiently[^1]:

- Develop mental models. Build heuristics. They allow you to recognize common scenarios more quickly and iterate on known solutions, instead of starting from scratch.

- Write down high-level lessons from a project. Focus on generalizing the lessons.

- Figure out how many "fucks to give" you have in a given time period. If one can complete 1 unit of work per day, then they can probably exceed that amount by 50% periodically, but will need an equal or greater amount of time to recover for the next few days. This also applies to weeks, months, and the year.

- Take extended breaks from programming and computer science. Think about other things. Hopefully you have some unrelated hobbies, if not spend some time developing them.

Programming is a marathon, not a sprint. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Lastly, not to plug my website[^2], but hopefully this is relevant: https://ashwinsundar.com/blog/compiled/learning-hard-things....

[^1]: Efficiency, not speed, is the metric worth focusing on.

[^2]: Search engine crawlers are disabled

We have to understand that everyone performs differently because of the neuronal capacity we have when it comes to concentrate, we can remove this barrier if in addition to working on our own we hire someone to help us.

It is as simple as entering upwork, describe what you need, record a loom explaining the necessary step by step, and that's it. For 200 usd you have someone working on your personal team.

I don't like going too fast, you usually make more mistakes and expend more energy when you try to go faster than you're able to.

But one way I know I became faster is by coding more and diversify what I've done. This way, your brain learns patterns and habits. It's faster to adapt a solution you already know than coming up with a entirely new one. It's also faster to use tools you're accustomed too, so the more you use them, the faster you'll be while using them.

Like always, the more you code, the better you are at coding.

So, by referencing existing solutions.

That and avoiding loafing. I'm literally doing it right now by responding to this post.

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