Totally. More generally, setting lots of small, tight deadlines really helps force my focus, if you're a deadline-driven type maybe you might feel the same way. I ran into the term "forced efficiency" the other day and it pretty much encompasses this practice:
http://gtd.marvelz.com/blog/2007/06/27/maximize-productivity...
No, but this sounds like an interesting thing to try so I might just do that. Thank you for sharing.
Re:Training Your Focus
by le_dominator on Sunday August 02, 2009 @06:43AM
(#737296)
Very cool idea. It's the mental equivalent of cross training for an MMA match! I'd like to give this a go tomorrow, but we have to come up with something a bit more memorable than "The ljolel Method". Any suggestions? ;)
Instead of figuring out how to set up the perfect set of variables to trigger flow (focus) for long periods of time, I do something else.
I purposely interrupt my work every 10 minutes for a long (5+ minutes) break. Most accounts I have read say that it takes 10-20 minutes to get into a state of flow to be able to do some real, hard work. But with the limitation of only 10 minutes of work, I force my brain to learn to get into flow much more quickly (definitely under 5 minutes, and I think much less but it's hard to measure!).
I only started doing this the last couple of weeks. I'm amazingly more productive, and the scope of my projects are increasingly ambitious.
I am posting this to see if anyone has had a similar experience. So, have you?