[...] more a common sense end-around to trick yourself into being more productive through discipline. The concept, which at its heart dates back to antiquity, comes from a smart kid from MIT with the very [...]

Random ideation is first about capturing cool ideas when you have them, and then about taking advantage of the energy and inspiration these bring to chase them down and flush them out. Though there are ways to concentratedly facilitate ideation, it seems a waste to disregard the cool thoughts that pop up randomly. Plus, this random sort are often the most interdisciplinary (in my experience, at least).

I bring up random ideation in response to this article because I worry it will get lost if one commits to doing “whatever it takes to avoid violating one’s schedule.” Many of the best ideas I’ve come up with have subverted whatever tasks I was doing at the times of their inceptions. Had I not written them down, I would have lost them. And often jotting them down is insufficient – often I get carried away and spew out illustrations, technical aspects, feature specs, people to ask, etc. across the subsequent ten minutes, and maybe three distinct ideas that have spun out of it, in the best scenarios taking hour-long detours from my original work. These detours are my very most productive work ever, however, because I’m so caught up in ideas. It’s like an electron firing, then bumping the next one along, on and on and on across the wires of my mind, lighting up one thing after another (an analogy that doesn’t actually hold true to physics, but you understand). I’d be more productive in the short-term if I didn’t permit this, and more likely to complete my assignments on time / at all, but there’s such a loss!

Do you disagree? If not, would you amend your assertions, or take another direction? If so, why? (I feel like my questions for you are extremely essay prompt-ish.)

Industry work usually energized me. My subconscious worked on it during evenings and weekends, and I was charged up on Monday to *continue* where work had left off on Friday. In grad school, I don’t continue. I restart from zero, over and over and over.

Sometimes in industry I had to negotiate to fight off pressures to defocus. A couple times I quit, and a couple times we worked out a new arrangement, which kept me focused as well as kept the company’s work getting done. Maybe the problem is that I don’t know how to negotiate in the academic world. All my jobs were at small companies, where negotiation is straightforward: the decision-maker is the person who hired you, you talk with that person every day about what’s going on, and every day, you smooth out the current small difficulties. In grad school (and maybe in big companies), there doesn’t seem to be a person you can negotiate with. Or even people you work with. There are just some mysterious “policies”. Maybe the trick is to find out who is behind those policies.

[...] 7. Take a 10 minute blog break. Make a little treat for yourself; let’s say you work effectively for two hours and then you can reward yourself with a 10 minute blog break! Works at home, and if you’re at the office, make sure no one sees you!  Visit decor8 or Daydream Lily. And if you want some productivity boost, visit zen habits: Take lots of breaks to get more done, Think simple now: The 4 hour workday or Study Hacks: Fixed Schedule Productivity [...]

[...] too many typos. I am learning to work only 40 hours a week (radical!). I am experimenting with Fixed Schedule Productivity and Completion Centric [...]

[...] WEEK: If your work day and work week tend to get away on you, give Cal Newport’s article on Fixed-Schedule Productivity a read. Cal is an MIT post-doc student who “explores strategies for building a remarkable [...]

I discovered just how important a work schedule was once I had a baby. I’m a grad student in a challenging program (physics); my daughter is now in preschool during the day, so the ONLY time I have to get anything done is during the day when she’s in school. Where before I just did stuff whenever, wherever–even pulling an all-nighter, if need be–now I’m hyperfocused on getting as much done during the school day as I can. No surfing the net, no Facebook, no procrastination. Get into the lab, or sit down at the desk, and WORK!

Funny thing is, I get more done now as a mother than I did when I was childless. It’s all about focus and efficiency.

[...] que é? Inspirado pelo texto do Cal Newport no Study Hacks [3], adotamos um cronograma de trabalho que consiste em foco no trabalho durante toda a manhã e tarde [...]

[...] post-graduation, but which make you a non-boring,fully-functional human being.So, inspired by this blog post, I’ve decided to strike back. It’s hard, but I’ve had somesuccesses: for the first [...]

[...] Cal Newport over on the Study Hacks Blog; you can read about it (and many other great things) over here. Basically FSP is a response to the notion that work will expand to fill the time you have allotted [...]