Ask HN: What Practices Has Helped You Reach Productivity Zen/Flow?

My best productivity habit has been using https://crushentropy.com/ every day. I wrote it for myself but a lot of people use it now.

It's like markdown for high resolution planning.

I used to feel harried trying to cram a lot into the day. Now I spend a few minutes planning the day and when I'm in a certain time block, I can totally relax, not worry about all the other things I need to get done in the day, and really focus.

If the day changes due to interruptions etc, I type that in and the rest of the day reflows around that.

One of the best tools is disconnecting from the internet. This pins my mental compute on the issue at hand and prevents mental threads from even being created. Need something about a specific library? I have its docs on my machine. Don't have docs? I have its code. No search engine, no Stack Overflow, no Wikipedia. Think harder.

Disable WiFi.

The code might not be optimal, but it's unlikely it would have been by looking things up online in the first place for a prototype/poc. Get prototype done, refine later on second pass.

Mail client, browser, and Slack are killed since they have no reason to live.

Slack is killed because it still has a blue dot from a message on a workspace somewhere. I refuse to fight it for my attention by tweaking notification parameters that don't seem to work. I had tried overwriting `slack-taskbar-highlight.` and `slack-taskbar-unread.` with `slack-taskbar-rest.*`, but it recreates them, and for that reason, killing Slack even offline gives me respite.

Toying with it: unplugging the charger and implementing a feature on battery. Long battery life? Not if you have NVIDIA graphics card activated.

Assuming this is for developers:

Close slack and email client for a given amount of time. Say keep it closed for 1 hour, then pop up to check it.

If you need to be urgently contacted sometimes, give such people your phone number, or another way to contact that is more intrusive. e.g. WhatsApp.

When using Slack or email, completely deal with one message (even if just creating a ticket to deal with it later) before reading the next.

When I wake up:

- I play a bit of guitar

- Lift my weights (all exercises, one set)

- Shower

- Drink coffee

That makes me wide awake and ready for the day.

Bonus: if you sleep well this becomes extra amazing.

Note: sleeping well is not a bonus, but unfortunately, sometimes it is.