1. get a schedule and plan out your day.
without this, i tend to go on facebook, youtube, reddit, and /pol/ for hours on end. then the next day i spend wondering… why did i waste all that time and what exactly did i get done?2. remove optionsokay, so there's a 2 hour block to work on map editing. cool. so let's take a quick 10 minute break because it's getting tiring. let's just sneak to the kitchen. oh shit, is that Melee I see? why yes it is. let's play it on my break. oh shit, now it's 2 hours later. OH WELL.there are clear things that are completely distracting. without mentioning obvious online timewasters, there are also things offline that can just be the string that catches the cat's undivided attention. don't be a cat, be a fucking lion that catches its prey.3. be accountablenobody gives a shit about your work, including you, if it's all in your head. tell other people. brag about it. be proud of it. enjoy your decision to keep working on the best video game you will pump out in your lifetime. either that or drop it and do something else. but make a goddamn decision and don't be stuck in a paranoid train that leads to more unproductivity, broken dreams, and unrecoverable time wasted.Work in progress. do not steal. OC. feel free to include suggestions
Quote:
"The earliest representation of this idea in culture is probably in the mythological Cretan tale of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus, a famous artist of his time, built feathered wings for himself and his son so that they might escape the clutches of King Minos. Daedalus warns his beloved son whom he loved so much to "fly the middle course", between the sea spray and the sun's heat. Icarus did not heed his father; he flew up and up until the sun melted the wax off his wings. For not heeding the middle course, he fell into the sea and drowned."
?
im skeptical about programs like these. does this actually help you?
These kinds of programs help, but only if you have the self-discipline to use them correctly.
I talked about this tangentially in a post about my morning routine which is also my most productive time of the day.
The basic approach I take is to just do unstructured time where I commit to working on something. Writing, programming, planning. It just has to be constructive, or I have to sit there and stare at it until I become productive. Giving myself that chunk each day is what keeps me working.I agree that its hard to not take breaks, but the best advice I've read recently is that you should just "sit in the chair," meaning block the time and force yourself to either be working on what you love, or waste that time.I also pound shitloads of coffee and iced tea, so that helps.I have a theory that punishing yourself for time-wasting doesn't work, because then you reward yourself for being punished by wasting even more time. Poor you.
So, instead of spending life thinking that you haven't started living life yet, enjoy the stupid pointless bullshit you like to do. Enjoy it shamelessly. And perversely, you will have to find something productive to do in order to punish yourself.