Working Notes: a commonplace notebook for recording & exploring ideas.
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Flow Collective Notes

I went through the Zero to Dangerous course a couple of years ago, as a way to be more productive and get more comfortable getting into "flow". While the marketing is very aggressive, and some of the terms are exaggerated I liked how coherent they made a lot of productivity based workflows, and the course was a good way to put things into practice.

Some of the habits I learned there have stuck with me: I'm recording my variations of what I learned and what stuck that I try to apply in my day to day work.

Setting goals in exponential durations
- establish a long term goal over decades
- set up next level goals in increasing levels of specificity down to days
- "next day", "next week", "next month", "next year", etc.
- goals should push limits
technology
- minimal/black backgrounds in technology, minimize "candy"-like attractiveness
- I also have a tiny personal phone with a small screen to help even more
- regular playlists to stay focused
time management
- plan out the day by blocking out time explicitly for tasks
- I like to use the stalogy editor notebooks to plot out my day with a pen/paper
- at the end of the day I can cross reference what actually happened with a pen of a different color
focused days
- block off days to explicitly focus on just one task
- prepare for the day up front to minimize distractions: food, etc.
- no unnecessary decisions
- minimize distration, set expectations with people
recovery
- explicitly schedule in and priroitize recovery time
- cycle between pushing and resting
- achieving flow generally means crossing throuh some resistance and finding release