Long time Red Hat colleague Greg DeKoenigsberg and I talk about managing our time–how we get off track and how we fight against letting it happen.

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  • Red Hat and Open Source Software
  • In today’s world of “work” where we sit in a chair and look at a screen, it’s really easy to waste time
  • Being on the lookout for those “tells” that give you an early-warning indicator that you’re on the path to wasting time
    • “Fake fortification”
    • Anxiety about our work and tasks to be completed
  • Anxiety vs. procrastination vs. being in Flow
  • Flow often happens when we are engaged in meaningful work
  • Figuring out ways to get into flow states
    • Being able to see the bigger picture of tedious work will give us
    • Breaking things into smaller, achievable tasks
    • Reduce the amount of time you spend comparing yourself others
      • Accept that completing a particular task might take you six hours to complete because you break it into chunks compared to someone else that it comes naturally to
  • Building habits around putting structures into place that protect us from doing stupid things with our time
  • Working in time blocks (Pomodoros) was a game changer for Greg
  • Holding back because we question whether it’s “worth it” or the best use of our time
  • John & Greg’s geeky hacks for trying to stay focused
  • Having your smartphone nearby is a distraction
  • The compound affect of doing things over and over again
  • The pros/cons of negative rewards

Resources

Credits

  • Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund
  • Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod
  • Original photo source

All songs licensed under Creative Commons