TJL #34: How to get started (Daily productivity #9)

Simple tips & tricks to be more productive

Welcome back to Today Jan Learned (TJL) #34. In this newsletter I share the best of what others have figured out already. To get these delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe by clicking the button below!

Key insight:

• Feeling demotivated? Get started by writing down a task and forcing yourself to work on it for 5 minutes.

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“Just get started” is great advice, but it doesn’t tell you how to get started.

I found these three steps to be helpful in getting started:

• Write down a task

• Set timer for 5 minutes

• Sit in front of your computer for the duration of the timer and only work on the task

How to apply

Step 1. Write down (part of the) task you want to accomplish.

Try to make this as small as possible.

For example, if you want to process your mail inbox I would write down “open Outlook.” Yes, that small. I want to share some code with my data science guild so I wrote down this task in my notebook.

Step 2. Set a timer for 5 minutes.

Step 3. Focus on this task for 5 minutes.

Force yourself to sit in front of your computer and focus only on this task. Getting negative feelings is normal, it’s how you handle them what matters. That’s it!

Thank you for reading!

That was today’s issue of the Daily productivity Newsletter 🚀

Daily Productivity is a newsletter in which I share practical and effective tips on how to become more productive.

I collect these tips from the best self-help books, podcasts, videos, and turn them into immediately actionable tips for you to apply to your own life!

If you want to tag along for the journey, feel free to subscribe here!

As always, you can find me on my website janmeppe.com or on Twitter at @janmeppe.

Previous TJLs

Read my previous TJLs by following on the links down below:

• TJL #1: How to conduct a weekly review

• TJL #2: How to set up a StackNavigator in React-native

• TJL #3: Money is not wealth

• TJL #4: You get rich by owning things

• TJL #5: How to not be overwhelmed

• TJL #6: How to remember the difference between margin and padding

• TJL #7: According to Jeff Bezos there are two types of failure

• TJL #8: A stupid coding mistake

• TJL #9: Akrasia

• TJL #10: How to set goals like Google

• TJL #11: How to write great copy for your startup product

• TJL #12: How to change font in React

• TJL #13: Civilisation advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them

• TJL #14: The Motivation-Skill Dichotomy

• TJL #15: No plan is also a plan

• TJL #16: How to understand difficult code

• TJL #17: How to write self-help books

• TJL #18: The power of precommitment

• TJL #19: Reflections on my first remote project (part 1)

• TJL #20: Reflections on my first remote project (part 2)

• TJL #21: Three small things

• TJL #22: Building Wedje (part 1)

• TJL #23: Building Wedje (part 2)

• TJL #24: Obscurity is good

• TJL #25: Zettelkasten method

• TJL #26: Use a checkbox (Daily Productivity #1)

• TJL #27: Be aware of the spotlight effect (Daily productivity #2)

• TJL #28: Start with the upper-left hand brick (Daily Productivity #3)

• TJL #29: It doesn’t matter where you take it from, what matters is where you take it to (Daily productivity #4)

• TJL #30: Start with writing your README (Daily productivity #5)

• TJL #31: Work with an outline (Daily productivity #6)

• TJL #32: Use active recall (Daily productivity #7)

• TJL #33: Use quadrants (Daily productivity #8)