I have a trick at my work as a developer to gain hyperfocus on difficult tasks, with 3 simple steps.
Step 1. Prime your brain Search for content on the internet like youtube videos, Tutorials, articles etc. anything that is somewhat related to the task and interesting to watch and even enjoyable. Your mind needs to latch onto it. Keep doing this and procrastinate until…
Step 2. Take the insipirational exit At some point your minds interested will peak and your mind wonders how to solve this yourself. Its going to itchband you will not be able to sit still. Take the inspirational exit and jump straight into your project.
Step 3. Its focus time! You mind is now filled with ideas and you jump into work. You start with the easiest thing and your mind will keep pushing you to finish all those great ideas it got from watching/reading all that content. Go from easy to hard to stay in the flow state, but this will mostly solve itself.
If everything works out, time will fly and you will have completed the task using your hyper focus. If not repeat Step 1.
This method works best with programming or digital art, but can also be applied to anything else.
Hope that helps some of you.
Cheers
very good advice, you did a great job making the directions easily digestible. i’m a hobbyist metalworker and this is a process i use frequently.
i will also add that as long as you’re not under a pressing time constraint, let your mind wander from time to time! sometimes the project you want to work on isn’t the same one your brain wants. and occasionally you can find inspiration in the impromptu side projects that cause a major breakthrough in whatever you just backburnered!
Makes sense, I’ll have to try this out. I have definitely managed to create the right mood accidentally.
I’m going to struggle to find entertaining tax information though. Some topics are truly joyless.
Tax avoidance is an entertaining tax topic
So at work, the tax processor should look up tax avoidance content.
I want to know what questions arise. Just curious.
At one time in England, houses were taxed not by square footage, but instead by how many windows they had! To avoid taxes, people removed and bricked up some of their windows. You can still see these mismatched sections of brick when you walk around today!
Also in Britain, a tax on bricks was levied to fund the war against American independence. What’s a bricklayer to do? Why, use bigger bricks of course! You can apparently tell if a building dates to before or after the revolutionary war based on the size of the bricks.
The measurement of cargo ships (sailing) for taxation also had an effect on ship design. In Britain, the formula was taxable tonnage = ((Length - 3/5 breadth) * (1/2 breadth)^2) / 94. The American system was ((length - 3/5 breadth) * breadth * depth) / 94 , with the depth being statutorily defined as half of the breadth. In both countries the breadth was measured on deck. A long narrow ship leaving an American port would often find itself measured twice as heavy when it arrived in England! As a result of these definitions, ships tended to be deeper than was optimal for best sailing in order to store more cargo in the untaxed area below the line where the formula defined the bottom. British ships, in particular, often had a pronounced tumble home (where the deck is not the widest part of the ship - usually the hull slopes inwards from the waterline up to the deck).
Tax avoidance is fascinating!
I’ve heard of the windows but not the bricks and ships. Thank you for squirreling me
You betcha, friend.
I have no idea if this will work for me, but it sounds like it might. Thanks for sharing.
Love this.
As a teacher I often have to jump on a task that isn’t actually that urgent but scratches an itch (to do with some research I’m excited about / solves a problem in a cool way / feels novel etc) in order to get me working through my to do list.
