productivity

8 Articles

Hack On Self: Headphone Friend

December 4, 2024 by 3 Comments

In the last two articles, I talked about two systems relying on audio notifications. The first one is the Alt-Tab annihilator system – a system making use of my window monitoring code to angrily beep at me when I’m getting distracted. The other is the crash prevention system – a small script that helps me avoid an annoying failure mode where I run out of energy before getting myself comfortable for it.

I’ve been appreciating these two systems quite a bit – not only are they at my fingertips, they’re also pretty effective. To this day, I currently use these two systems to help me stay focused as I hack on my own projects or write articles, and they are definitely a mainstay in my self-hacking arsenal.

There is a particular thing I’ve noticed – audio notifications help a fair bit in a way that phone or desktop notifications never would, and, now I have a framework to produce them – in a way that calls for a purpose-tailored device. It’s just wireless headphones, Pi-powered, connected through WiFi, and a library to produce sounds on my computer, but it turns out I can squeeze out a lot out of this simple combination.

Here’s a pocketable device I’ve developed, using off-the-shelf hardware – an audio receiver/transmitter with extra IO, paired to my laptop. And, here’s how I make use of this device’s capabilities to the fullest.

Audio Output

In the “producing sound out of a Pi” article, I’ve mentioned USB-C 3.5mm soundcards. You can use them with a USB-C host port, and you don’t even need any sort of resistors for that – the soundcard doesn’t try and detect state of the CC pin, and why would it, anyway? Get VBUS, GND, D+, and D-, and you got yourself an audio card with high quality output.

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A grey smartphone sits inside a sleeve made of light brown wood veneer and a black felt interior.

Wooden Smartphone Sleeve Keeps You On Task

January 31, 2023 by 2 Comments

Smartphones are amazing tools, but sometimes they can be an equally amazing time suck. In an effort to minimize how much precious time goes down the drain, [Lance Pan and Zeynep Kirmiziyesil] decided to make a functional and beautiful smartphone sleeve to keep you on task.

Most modern smartphones have some form of Do Not Disturb mode available, but having the phone visible can still be an invitation for distraction. By tucking the phone into an accessible but less visible sleeve, one can reduce the visual trigger to be on the phone while keeping it handy in the even of an emergency.

Once in the sleeve, the NFC tag sandwiched between the felt and wood veneer triggers an automation to put the phone into Do Not Disturb mode. This hack looks like something that you could easily pull off in an afternoon and looks great which is always a winning combination in our book.

To see some more focus-oriented hacks, checkout the Pomodachi or this Offline E-Paper Typewriter.

Organise Your Hacks With TreeSheets: An Open Source Hierarchical Spreadsheet

September 7, 2022 by 42 Comments

Some people may have heard of Dutch programmer [Wouter Van Oortmerssen] since he’s the creator of the Amiga-E programming language, as well as being involved with several game engines. Heard of SimCity? How about Borderlands 2 or Far Cry? Having had clearly a long and illustrious career as a programmer for a variety of clients — including a long stint at Google, working on Web Assembly — many people will be familiar with at least some of his work. But you may not have heard of his TreeSheets productivity tool. Which would be a shame, as you’ve been missing out on something pretty darn useful.

TreeSheets is described as a hierarchical spreadsheet, which is intended as a replacement for several distinct tools; think spreadsheets, mindmaps and text editors and similar. In [Wouter]’s words:

It’s like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it’s hierarchical.
It’s like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact.
It’s like an outliner, but in more than one dimension.
It’s like a text editor, but with structure.

Having been in development for about a decade, TreeSheets might look a bit dated here and there, but the design is clear and distraction-free, which is exactly what you need when you’re trying to focus on the task in hand. Why not give it a try and see if it works for you? After the break, you can see a video tutorial by YouTube user [DrilixProject].

No strangers to productivity hacks, here’s Pomodachi, a cute pomodoro timer crossed with a Tamagotchi. Sometimes productivity isn’t solved with software tools, but more to do with your attitude to projects. Finally sometimes the route to greater productivity is a little closer to home, like inside your head.

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Pomodachi: A Productivity Pet You Feed By Working

August 14, 2021 by 1 Comment

Being productive doesn’t have to be a lonely endeavor. Even if you’re a lone wolf, who wouldn’t benefit from having a cute little productivity pet to cheer them on? That’s the idea behind [droxpopuli]’s Pomodachi, which combines a hardware implementation of the Pomodoro technique with a virtual pet. It adds some fun, but doesn’t overly gamify time tracking to the point of distraction. And this is way more fun than just sticking a pair of googly eyes on a tomato-shaped timer.

Inside the box is an Adafruit HalloWing M4 Express and a NeoKey FeatherWing with two Kailh box white switches for a satisfying clack. [droxpopuli] printed up a PyPortal-inspired case and added a glass lens for a spiffy tube TV look.

Pomo himself is a cute little jack-o-lantern looking creature with a teddy bear face and no arms or legs. He could eat with his face, but prefers to be fed. That’s where you come in. You feed him by completing a set of four 20-minute work intervals.

Don’t worry about keeping track of time, because he does that for you and spends the time foraging for food. When it’s break time, Pomo lets you know and suggests an activity. This is when you press the button and feed him. If your productivity begins to flag a bit, don’t freak out — there’s a multiplier for catching up, and you have seven chances before Pomo runs away forever.

The Pomodoro Technique is pretty great for productivity, and it’s versatile, too. Here’s a hydration-based Pomodoro that will flood your desk if you don’t drink enough water.

[via Hackaday.io]

Nissan’s Office Pod Concept Is A Productivity Paradise On Wheels

February 28, 2021 by 40 Comments

All this working from home is pretty great, but we have to admit that we miss packing up the Hackaday office and heading for the local coffeehouse once in a while to spend a few hours writing against the buzzing background. One thing we don’t miss about the experience is that you’re never guaranteed a place to sit and spread out. And unless you trust a friendly stranger to keep an eye on your stuff while you’re in the bathroom, you have to take it with you at the risk of losing your table.

If only we could afford one of Nissan’s mobile office pod concept vehicles. We’ve always wanted to pretend we’re doing surveillance and would probably have the thing wrapped with graphics for a fake flower shop or something. That would certainly make it easier to park somewhere and borrow someone’s open Wi-Fi network  — maybe even from the coffeehouse parking lot after we hit the drive-thru.

As you’ll see in the extended tour video below, Nissan seem to have thought of everything except restroom facilities. The cab-over-engine design and all-terrain tires would make it easier to drive out into nature and really get away from it all. Once you’ve found the perfect spot, you can open the lift gate for some fresh air, or get some sun while you work by pulling out the motorized unibody-constructed cubicle which includes a built-in Herman Miller Cosm chair. (Evidently the Aeron is old and busted now; we disagree). For some reason, the cubicle is edge-lit, and not in a way that would help you work at the desk. According to the video, it’s based on the Caravan NV350, which looks far more comfortable but not as cool when outfitted as an alternate mobility concept.

The office pod has some nice amenities like a DC-AC converter so you can run your Keurig or Nespresso, and there’s even a UV-disinfecting lamp in the glove box. The larger windows behind the cab can be electronically shaded so you don’t bake in the sun. Here’s where things get a bit ridiculous: the floor is made of clear polycarbonate in case you want to park lengthwise over a small stream and watch the surviving fish go by underneath your feet. And if you really want to take a break, climb up to the roof deck and stretch out in the chaise lounge beneath the deck umbrella.

If we lived anywhere but America, we might forego the flower shop graphics wrap and dress it up to look like a TV detector van instead.

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Lazydoro Mothers You Into Being Productive

January 29, 2020 by 3 Comments

The Pomodoro Technique has helped countless people ramp up their productivity since it was devised in the late 1980s. Breaking down tasks into 25 minute chunks can improve your focus tremendously, provided you show up, start the timer, and get to work.

Lazydoro takes the psychology focus even further. In [romilly.cocking]’s interpretation, a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor is your productivity Santa Claus — it knows whether you’re doing your part by simply applying butt to chair, and your present is a productive 25 minutes where not a second is wasted futzing with timers and worrying about time lost to such administrative tasks. When Lazydoro senses that you have arrived, the Raspi Zero starts a 25-minute Pomodoro timer, and represents the time remaining across a Pimoroni BLINKT LED matrix.

But hold on, you haven’t heard the best part yet. Lazydoro was designed with real life in mind, because [romilly] thought of everything. Whenever you leave your chair, a 5-minute timer starts, and there’s a beep when time is up. If you make it through the 25 minutes and hear the victory beep, then it’s break time. But if you get up too soon, the work timer stops, and the 5-minute timer becomes your limited space in which to fret, stare out the window, or get the snack you think you desperately need to keep going. This makes Lazydoro awesome even without the Pomodoro part, because simply sitting back down is a big step one.

If you make a circuit sculpture Pomodoro and stare at it on your 5-minute breaks, you might achieve productivity enlightenment.

Program Your Brain, Hack Your Way To Productivity

October 14, 2016 by 31 Comments

Most people wish they were more productive. Some buckle down and leverage some rare facet of their personality to force the work out. Some of them talk with friends. Some go on vision quests. There are lots of methods for lots of types of people. Most hackers, I’ve noticed, look for a datasheet. An engineer’s reference. We want to solve the problem like we solve technical problems.

It's got the cover equivalent of click-bait, but the centimeter thick bibliography listing research sources at the back won me over.
It’s got the cover equivalent of click-bait, but the centimeter thick bibliography listing research sources at the back won me over.

There were three books that gave me the first hints at how to look objectively at my brain and start to hack on it a little. These were The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Flow By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Getting Things Done By David Allen.

I sort of wandered into these books in a haphazard path. The first I encountered was The Power of Habit which I found to be a bit of a revelation. It presented the idea of habits as functions in the great computer program that makes up a person. The brain sees that you’re doing a task over and over again and just learns to do it. It keeps optimizing and optimizing this program over time. All a person needs to do is trigger the habit loop and then it will run.

For example: Typing. At first you either take a course or, if your parents left you alone with a computer for hours on end, hunt-and-peck your way to a decent typing speed. It involves a lot of looking down at the keyboard. Eventually you notice that you don’t actually need to look at the keyboard at all. Depending on your stage you may still be “t-h-i-n-k-i-n-g”, mentally placing each letter as you type. However, eventually your brain begins to abstract this away until it has stored, somewhere, a combination of hand movements for every single word or key combination you typically use. It’s only when you have to spell a new word that you fall back on older programs.

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