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Ask HN: How do I achieve my goals with only fragments of time?

by samh748 on 7/17/22, 4:34 PM with 6 comments

Due to life circumstances, it's incredibly difficult to allocate large chunks of time towards my goals. And I'm the kind of person that takes a substantial amount of time to settle into focus mode (eg if I read something for 15 minutes I won't retain anything, and I'd have to reread the same sections again next time). As a result I mostly spend these fragments of time scattered, doing unimportant work.

Have any of you found a way to achieve anything worthwhile with only small chunks of time?

Specifically, I'd really love to do some serious reading and to make actual progress on my writing...

  • by keiferski on 7/17/22, 7:06 PM

    1. I think consistency is really the key when it come to writing. You’d be surprised how much you can write in 15 minutes per day if you do it every day. The difficult part is doing that 15 minutes, every day, for months.

    2. I recommend looking into the work routines of famous writers. There is a good book on the topic called Daily Rituals. Two that I recall were Hemingway, who wrote immediately when he woke up at 5:00, and Kafka, who managed to write after working his mundane office job all day.

    3. In terms of learning, I really recommend looking to a SRS program like Anki, combined with list-formatted data on the topic you want to learn about. For example, if you want to learn about the American Revolution, get a PDF of an encyclopedia on the topic, then add one new encyclopedia entry per day. I do this for a variety of topics and find it much more efficient than reading long books. Using a SRS program also is the best way to make your learning time efficient.

  • by eimrine on 7/17/22, 4:45 PM

    I am not very proficient in the topic, but I understand your question an I do have a little live-hack - to glue similar tasks. For example, if I need to weld something, I am not going to do this rn but I am going to throw all metals which needs welding into one basket. When lots of weld work has been gathered or when something important needs welding rn, I do all welding at once. That might save some time to assemble and to disassemble my welding workplace.

  • by brudgers on 7/17/22, 5:37 PM

    To me writing is amenable to fragmented time.

    When something is kicking around my brain, getting it out on paper takes but a moment.

    Fragments of writing from fragmented times.

    Immersive reading requires a time chunk.

    Writing can coalesce while doing something else.