Aaron Swartz wrote a very famous article called "HOWTO: Be more productive" (). This article is really well written. I have read it many times and I agree with the author's point of view. I have borrowed some of the methods mentioned by the author and applied them to my own life, and found that they are indeed effective, so I would like more people to read this article. Aaron Swartz is definitely a great person. He participated in the formulation of RSS 1.0 when he was 14 years old. He dropped out of Stanford after one year and became a member of YC. His company later merged with reddit. He is also the founder of the web.py framework. Without further ado, here is the translation: Someone must have said to you, "The time you spend watching TV can be used to write a book." It is undeniable that writing a book is definitely a better use than watching TV. Time, but the establishment of this conclusion requires an assumption: "Time is interchangeable", which means that the time spent watching TV can easily be used to write a book. But unfortunately, this is not the case. Different times have different quality levels. If I realize on my way to the subway that I've forgotten my notebook, it's hard to concentrate on writing. Likewise, it's hard to concentrate when you're constantly interrupted. There are also some psychological and emotional factors here. Some days I am in a good mood and willing to take the initiative to do something, but other days I feel so depressed and tired that all I can do is watch TV. If you want to become more efficient, you must be aware of this fact and deal with it well. First, you have to make good use of different kinds of time. Secondly, you have to make your time more efficient. Use your time more effectively Choose the right questions Life is so short, why waste your time doing meaningless things? It’s easy to do things that make you feel comfortable, but you should ask yourself why you are doing them? Is there something more important waiting for you to do? Why don't you do those things? These questions are difficult to answer, but solving each one will make you more productive. This doesn't mean that all your time should be spent doing the things that matter most. That’s certainly not the case with my time (otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this article right now). However, it is an important measure of how fulfilling my life is. Collect a lot of problems Another secret that many people know is: if you identify a problem and devote all your energy to solving it, you will be most efficient. I found this to be very difficult to achieve. Right now, for example, I am working out, drinking orange juice, clearing my desk, chatting with my brother, and writing this article. Throughout the day today, I wrote this article, read a book, ate something, responded to a few emails, chatted with some friends, bought something, and revised several other articles. I backed up my hard drive and sorted out my book list. There are a lot of different projects that allow me to do different things with different qualities of time. What's more, there are other things to do when you get stuck or bored. This will also make you more creative. Creativity is when you apply what you have learned elsewhere to your work. If you work in many different directions at the same time, you will get more ideas and creativity. It’s not difficult to make a list and find a few different things to do at the same time. Most people have many, many to-do items. But if you try to keep them all in your head, they will slowly disappear. Remember that the mental stress of all these things can overwhelm you. The solution is still simple: write them down. Once you have a list of things to do, you can better organize them into categories. For example, my list includes: programming, thinking, errands, reading, entertainment and rest. Most projects include many different tasks. Take writing this article as an example. In addition to the actual writing process, it also includes reading other articles about procrastination, considering various parts of the article, organizing sentences, asking others for questions, etc. Each task belongs to a different part of the list, so you can do it at the right time. Integrate the to-do list with your life Once you have such a to-do list, all you need to do is remember it from time to time, and the best way to remember it is to put it where you can see it. For example, I always keep a stack of books on my desk, and the one on top is the one I'm currently reading. When I want to read, I just grab a book from above and read it. I do the same for watching TV/movies. When I'm interested in a movie, I put it in a special folder on my computer. Whenever I want to take a break and watch a movie, I open that folder. I have also thought about some more in-depth ways. For example, I mark some articles I want to read as "to be read", and when I want to surf the Internet, I will look at the unread articles accumulated in the past. Improve the quality of your time It is not enough to maximize the use of time as above. What is more important is to improve the quality of your own time. So what exactly do you do? Reduce physical constraints Carry paper and pen: Many people I know have a notepad or something like that in their pocket. Paper and pen are very useful many times. You can record your thoughts at any time. I even wrote an entire article on the subway using this method.

Avoid interruptions: For tasks that require concentration, you should try to avoid interruptions. A very simple way is to go to a place where no one can disturb you. Another way is to tell the people around you not to disturb you for a while. Don't go too far on this point. You should be interrupted when you're wasting time. Helping others solve their problems is certainly a better use of time than sitting around watching the news. Reduce psychological constraints on eating, sleeping, and exercising: When you feel hungry, tired, and anxious, the quality of your time will be low. The solution to this problem is simple: eat, sleep, and exercise. Saying to yourself, "I'm tired, but I can't take a break because I have to work" will make you feel like you're working hard, but in fact you'll be more productive after taking a break. Since you have to go to bed sooner or later, you might as well get some rest first to improve your efficiency during the remaining time. Get along with happy people: Getting along with happy people will make you happy and make you more relaxed. Maybe many people are willing to hide in their houses, not have contact with other people, and work hard. They think that this way their time will not be "wasted", but in fact this will make them depressed and their work efficiency will be greatly reduced. Share your stress with friends: Even if your friends aren't the contagious type of people who bring you joy, solving complex problems with other people can make them simpler. On the one hand, everyone can share the mental stress with each other. On the other hand, being with other people allows you to focus on your work instead of being constantly distracted. Procrastination What is mentioned above is not the focus of the problem. The biggest problem regarding efficiency is "procrastination". Although many people won’t admit it, almost everyone procrastinates to some extent. So how to avoid it? What is procrastination? From the outside looking in, you're doing fun things (like playing games, watching the news) instead of doing real work. But the crux of the question is: why on earth do you do this? What exactly is going on in your head? I've spent a lot of time researching this, and the best explanation I can give is that the brain assigns a "brain force field" to each task. Have you ever played with two magnets interacting? If you put them opposite poles, they will repel each other and you will feel the magnetic force between them. The more you try to bring them together, the more repulsive you will feel. The same goes for the mind and spirit. It is invisible and intangible, but you can feel its presence. And the closer you try to get to it, the further away it will get from you. You can't overcome the repulsion between two fields by brute force. Instead, what you should do is reverse direction. So what creates the "spiritual force field"? There seem to be two main reasons: whether the task is difficult and whether the task is assigned. Difficult Tasks Break Down the Task One of the reasons a task is difficult is because it is ambitious. For example, if you want to make a recipe construction program, no one can complete it in one go. This is a goal rather than a task. A task is a concrete concept that moves you closer toward your goal. A good task is one that you can implement immediately, such as "Draw a sketch showing the recipe." When you complete the previous task, the next step will become clearer. You'll consider what constitutes a recipe, what kind of search mechanism you need, how to build a database of recipes, and so on. This way you build an engine where each task leads to the next. For every larger project, I think about a series of tasks I need to complete and add those tasks to my to-do list. Similarly, when I finish some tasks, I will add the tasks that need to be completed next to the task list. Simplify the task Another reason a task becomes difficult is that it is too complex. The task of "writing a book" may seem overwhelming to you, so start by writing an article. If even one article feels too much, then write a paragraph summary first. The most important thing is to actually do some work and make real progress. Once you clarify your task, you can judge it more clearly and understand it more easily. It's easier to improve something that already exists than to create something from scratch. If you write a paragraph, then little by little, it will become an article and eventually a book. Think About It Often solving a difficult problem requires some inspiration. If you are not familiar with that field, you should start by studying the field, learn from other people's experiences, slowly study and understand the field, and make some small attempts to see if you can master this field. Assigned Tasks Assigned tasks are those tasks that you are asked to complete. Many psychological experiments have shown that when you "stimulate" other people to do something, they are less likely to do that thing well. External stimuli such as rewards and punishments kill “intrinsic motivation” – your genuine interest in a problem. The human brain has an innate resistance to what it is asked to do.

This phenomenon is not limited to what other people ask you to do, but also occurs when you assign tasks to yourself. If you say to yourself, "I should do X work well, this is the most important thing for me now," then you will feel that X suddenly becomes the most difficult thing in the world. However, once Y becomes the "most important thing", the original X becomes simple again. Make up an imaginary task. If you want to accomplish X, tell yourself to do Y.

Unfortunately, it's hard to fool yourself like this because you know exactly what you're doing. Don’t assign tasks to yourself. It may seem tempting to assign tasks to yourself, such as saying to yourself “I have to finish writing this article before going to eat.” What’s even worse is to let others pretend to assign you some tasks. But both methods will make you less efficient. In fact, you are still assigning tasks to yourself, and your brain will just avoid it. The difficult job of making things fun doesn't sound like a joyful thing, but in fact it's probably what brings me the most joy. Not only does a difficult problem allow you to focus your full attention, but it also makes you feel great and accomplished when you complete it. So the secret to helping yourself get something done is not to convince yourself that you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it is really interesting. If something isn't interesting, all you need to do is make it interesting. Summary The real secret to efficiency is to "listen to yourself". Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired, and take a break when you are bored. , do those interesting and fun projects. This seems easy, but some ideas in society are leading us in the opposite direction. To become more effective, all we need to do is turn around and “listen to ourselves.”