Here is my note for “HOWTO: Be more productive” by Aaron Swartz.

Spend time efficiently

Choose good problems

Life is short (or so I’m told) so why waste it doing something dumb? It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why don’t you do that instead? Such questions are hard to face up to (eventually, if you follow this rule, you’ll have to ask yourself why you’re not working on the most important problem in the world) but each little step makes you more productive.

Have a bunch of them

Time has various levels of quality.

Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time. Plus, you’ll have other things to work on if you get stuck or bored (and that can give your mind time to unstick yourself).

It also makes you more creative. Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in.

Make a list

Once you have a list of all the things you want to do, you can organize it by kind. For example, my list is programming, writing, thinking, errands, reading, listening, and watching (in that order).

Most major projects involve a bunch of these different tasks.

Each task can go under the appropriate section, so that you can do it when you have the right kind of time.

Integrate the list with your life

Once you have this list, the problem becomes remembering to look at it. And the best way to remember to look at it is to make looking at it what you would do anyway. For example, I keep a stack of books on my desk, with the ones I’m currently reading on top. When I need a book to read, I just grab the top one off the stack.

I’ve also thought about some more intrusive ways of doing this. For example, a web page that pops up with a list of articles in my “to read” folder whenever I try to check some weblogs. Or maybe even a window that pops up with work suggestions occasionally for me to see when I’m goofing off.

Make your time higher quality by easing physical and mental constraints

• Carry pen and paper
• Avoid being interrupted

For tasks that require serious focus, you should avoid getting interrupted. One simple way is to go somewhere interrupters can’t find you. Another is to set up an agreement with the people around you: “don’t bother me when the door is closed” or “IM me if I have headphones on” (and then you can ignore the IMs until you’re free).

Sometimes if you’re really wasting time you should be distracted. It’s a much better use of time to help someone else with their problem than it is to sit and read the news.

• Eat, sleep, exercise

Time when you’re hungry or tired or twitchy is low-quality time. Improving it is simple: eat, sleep, and exercise.

• Talk to cheerful people
• Share the load

Even if your friends aren’t cheerful, just working on a hard problem with someone else makes it much easier. For one thing, the mental weight gets spread across both people. For another, having someone else there forces you to work instead of getting distracted.

Procrastination and the mental force field

Your brain puts up a sort of mental force field around tasks that are hard or assigned. Like magnetic poles repel, “the more you try to go towards it the more it pushes you away. And so, not surprisingly, you end up going in another direction.” The following are how you can deal with these two problems or tasks separately.

Hard problems

Break down and simplify your goal into tasks that are specific concrete steps you can take towards the goal, and “add them to the categorized todo list (see above)” consistently. You can also do some research and trails on the goals.

You build up a momentum, each task leading to the next.

The important thing is to have something done right away.

Once you have something, you can judge it more accurately and understand the problem better. It’s also much easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page.

Assigned problems

Assigned problems are problems you’re told to work on. Numerous psychology experiments have found that when you try to “incentivize” people to do something, they’re less likely to do it and do a worse job. External incentives, like rewards and punishments, kills what psychologists call your “intrinsic motivation” — your natural interest in the problem.

• Create a false assignment
• Don’t assign problems to yourself
• Make things fun

So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun.

Conclusion

There are a lot of myths about productivity — that time is fungible, that focusing is good, that bribing yourself is effective, that hard work is unpleasant, that procrastinating is unnatural — but they all have a common theme: a conception of real work as something that goes against your natural inclinations.

Further reading

If you want to learn more about the pscyhology of motivation, there is nothing better than Alfie Kohn. He’s written many articles on the subject and an entire book, Punished by Rewards, which I highly recommend.

I hope to address how to quit school in a future essay, but you should really just go out and pick up The Teenage Liberation Handbook. If you’re a computer person, one way to quit your job is by applying for funding from Y Combinator. Meanwhile, Mickey Z’s book The Murdering of My Years features artists and activists describing how they manage to make ends meet while still doing what they want.

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以下是個人閱讀亞倫．斯沃茨所撰寫之〈HOWTO: Be more productive〉的筆記。

有效運用時間：慎選、收集並條列具有價值的目標，然後將其融入生活之中

生命不該浪費在愚蠢的事物上。我們總是可以毫不費力地著手開始處理那些輕鬆簡單的工作，但你應該隨時質問自己：

• 有其他更重要的任務需要處理嗎？
• 若是如此，為什麼你現在處理的不是那項任務？
• 為什麼你現在處理的不是世界上最需要解決的問題？

每項工作都涵蓋許多不同的任務。分門別類地條列所有任務可讓你依此適當地安排和調整時間。

你可以透過各種工具、技術或技巧來整理和放置所需資源，降低執行重要任務的阻力並縮短轉換任務或尋找相關資源的時間，以最自然且直覺的方式依序完成所有任務。

不同的時間具有不同的品質等級。

你可以將許多不同的任務分配於不同的時間進行處理，以充分運用具有不同品質等級的時間。適時地轉換和投入不同的任務也可讓你獲得更多創意靈感。

創意是跨領域地靈活運用所知所學的能力。

提升時間的品質：減少身心限制

• 隨身攜帶紙筆，方便隨時書寫和記錄
• 執行需要高度專注的任務時避免受到干擾

如果你正在將時間浪費在不重要的事物上，反倒應該被干擾一下。與其將時間花費於看新聞，不如幫助他人解決問題。

• 適當的飲食、睡眠和運動
• 與開朗的人交談
• 與他人共同分擔工作壓力

由於團隊成員可以共同分攤心理負擔，且身旁共事的人也會迫使你專注於手上的工作，因此即使你的朋友個性並不開朗，只要與他人通力合作，任何難題也都可以迎刃而解。

拖延和精神力場

你的大腦會在艱鉅和指派的任務週遭佈下某種精神力場，在你每次嘗試著手進行該任務時產生對等強度的阻力。你可以透過下列方法分別化解這兩種任務的精神力場。

艱鉅的任務

將你的目標分解並簡化為多個具體任務，並將其持續將所有任務新增至上述的分類待辦事項清單，而你只要完成這些任務即可達成目標。你也可以針對目標進行深入研究和試驗。

你可以營造工作的動力循環，讓你在每個任務完成後，自然會繼續著手進行下一個任務。

請務必立即完成某些任務。

初步完成某些任務後，你便可以更精確地評斷該任務，並對整個目標具有更深入的瞭解。相較於從頭開始，要根據現有項目進行改進是容易得多。

指派的任務

指派的任務是指自己或他人要求你執行的任務。許多心理實驗都發現嘗試「激勵」人們完成任務時，反而會導致較高的失敗機率或較差的結果。獎勵和懲罰等外在激勵會扼殺你對問題本身的興趣，心理學家將其稱為「內部動機」。

• 將不重要的任務指派給自己，利用精神力場讓自己投入其他真正重要的任務
• 不要為自己指派任務
• 讓工作變得好玩有趣

讓你自己著手進行某項任務的祕訣並非說服自己必須完成任務，而是說服自己這項任務非常好玩有趣。

結論

擺脫眾多的效率迷思。聆聽內心，順應自然才能有效提升效率。