HN Reader

Cool idea!

I would note there are some known health hazards in handling thermal-paper receipts(BPA/BPS)[1] with your bare hands if you do so often. I don't know much beyond this, I would look into it.

[1] https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...

Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.

The "tasks on slips" remind me of the Cast Deployment System that was used at Walt Disney World 20 years ago (not sure when it started or how it evolved, but it was in use then).

All cast members in every park and other location were dispatched by PCs with receipt printers. To begin a shift or return from a break, you typed in your number to a CDS PC (located basically behind any convenient backstage door). The PC would just print a slip of paper and log your out. The slip would be one of:

1. Relieve John Doe at <Position> in <Location>. John Doe: return to PC (I think it also had a multi-stage bump possibility, where you replace John and John is sent directly to bump Bob.)

1b. Relieve John Doe. John's break time Start: 9:05 End 9:35

2. Do <TASK> until 9:08 (e.g. Straighten plush in <STORE NAME> or Stock candy in <STORE NAME>)

3. You're released to go home

It was a wildly efficient system, which basically allowed their operations software, which presumably knew about attendance, ride wait times, store sales, etc. to put each person to the most useful position at any moment, and also to give people specific useful things to do during slow periods (or indeed to release them early if they didn't have anything actually important for them to do).

Maybe someone can relate to me on this...

> With this new system, I haven't missed tracking my habits even once.

When I'm in a productive era like that it mostly feels amazing. But it also comes with this looming threat that it can't go on like that forever. The feeling that maintaining such a high standard will only lead to a big fall once something inevitably disrupts the system. It also creates a sense of burden because by being so 'active' in the world, people come to expect you to remain active. And many of the tasks you've completed lead to more tasks that wouldn't exist if you had just stayed lazy.

This, combined with the realization that I can get away with doing almost nothing productive as long as I have a job, has made it hard for me to even want to be productive.

This is a topic that's really interesting to me, and I've thought a lot about it.

The approach that this guy is taking to break out of the addicting loop of gaming/scrolling/whatever is to try to take the principles that make those things appealing and port them to the things that we know we should be doing. Video games have these short feedback loops and quick rewards, so his idea is to make real life more like a video game, in some small way. I was surprised to see that even this website has little achievements in the bottom right corner, when you scroll or see a section for the first time you'll get a little popup congratulating you.

There's nothing evil or wrong about this on the surface, of course. But I wonder if it's not making the situation worse by ingraining a need for quick feedback and frequent external affirmation into wider and wider areas of our lives. In one of my favorite books of all time, Amusing ourselves to Death, Neil Postman talks about the "entertainmentification" of education. The book makes the brilliant and alarming insight that over the centuries, all of humanity's efforts have gone into dealing with the problem of lacking information (and, I would add, entertainment). But now we have the opposite problem: we are so flooded with information, and entertainment, we don't know how to handle it, and society is totally unprepared. If memory serves, Postman warns that we are becoming a people who can't do anything that isn't entertaining. And this was published in 1985, long before Tiktok and its ilk.

Another approach, which admittedly does require some mental strength, is to allow oneself to get bored. Boredom is the mother of invention. I have a theory that our brain has a preferred level of stimulation; if external stimulation is high, internal stimulation will diminish to achieve the desired total; and if external stimulation is low, internal stimulation will increase. The most productive and satisfying times I've ever had in my life have been when I cut myself off from cheap entertainment. When I do that, suddenly I enjoy the hard things again.

I have another theory, that great things are accomplished by people with nothing else to do. If we allow ourselves to swim in an environment of endless entertainment, we're effectively kneecapping our ability to do great things.

---

Also, isn't handling a lot of receipt paper bad for you or something?

I had a time when my condition was acting up and I was struggling to deal with JIRA and got the idea of making paper tickets with a receipt printer. I bought a few receipt printers on Ebay and learned how to use them but never really wound up coupling them to JIRA because handwritten tickets were good enough and my condition got better. Wound up printing a lot of Pokémon characters do, as reference art for Pokémon is intended for low-quality small screens and does great on thermal printers.

You can get a range of different thermal printer types, one discovery I made was that if you went looking for thermal printers in North America and looked for a width in millimeters you'd get cheap Chinese printers that were often adequate, if you looked for a width in inches you'd get name brand printers that were more expensive. Most thermal printers these days connect to USB but you can get one that connects to Ethernet which I think is ideal if you want something to be controlled by a server.

It's increasingly strange how psychologically different something is when it's physically in front of you vs a representation of that exact same thing on a particular sort of display, especially given apparently some representations of activities on the display are addictive, while others become repulsive. As I mentioned yesterday I'm hearing more from people that attempt to avoid screens as much as possible, and this seems like yet another manifestation of that tendency.

If our UIs were more skeumorphic would that help with all this and remove the need for the physical printer?

Great article! Many ideas that I have also noticed put together, nicely done. Although I'm kinda curious how long you have used this system to truly "know" it's bullet-proof.

In my experience, all systems fail without outside pressure and/or right nutrition and exercise. If I eat a lot of carbs and in general, gain fat and dont exercise I get nothing done. Eating ketoish and exercising every 2/3 days and I get a lot done.

Thinking about work as loops is the right idea, I do agree. Human brains slowly accomodate new thought-patterns and one must continously keep at them to make them appear easy. Any time I come back after vacation I feel immediate exhaustion and repulsion towards programming even though it's easy to me. You just lose the familiarity.

Anyway, I write tasks down as well although my system is just a webapp I built for myself. It's interesting I built it as hacky prototype but I've never come around finishing it even though I've been using it somewhat regularly for 5 years or so. Or I write down things on paper.

The least ceremony required for the process, to me, seems is the only long-term solution. But I appreciate this another take on it.

Great first article, and very interesting to see someone else using a receipt printer for bite-sized task management!

I have a variety of automations running which print actionable tasks to my receipt printer via a Raspberry Pi. It’s nice having a real-life ticket I can take hold of.

One thing to be aware of if you’re handling receipts frequently: make sure to buy phenol-free thermal paper. Phenol is toxic and some types of it are banned in certain countries.

my receipt printer is a whiteboard in the gym. I went from "I do some scattered, random assortment of lifts when I feel like it" to "I have 3 routines I cycle through every day" and what it took was writing down each routine and tracking the weight I did last time. Checking off my daily workout is my pulling a ticket down off the chore kanban. Every once in a while, as I get stronger, I get to "take a number off the board" meaning I've surpassed that amount of weight in my routine (eg: after a few weeks of doing 25 pound lateral shoulder raises I'm able to bump my routine up to 30. if no other exercises use 25 pound dumbbells I can erase the 25 off the board). That's my "dumping out the jar". It's worked for 2 years, I've gone from being at best a dilettante in this space to losing 50 pounds, gaining the ability to bench press my weight and, and this is the important part, I feel good about my body for the first time in my forty years. I think the difference is that it's several gameplay loops at once. The short loop is "do today's workout, get today's dopamine pop", the medium term loop is "let me see if I can work out more days this month than last month" and the long term loop is "let me see if I can get strong enough that 30 pounds is trivial for me". With those multiple, simultaneous loops there's a variety in the (ephemeral, immaterial, entirely made up and internal) reward that stops it from becoming meaningless. I think OP's system has a parallel structure: the two reward loops are completing a ticket and emptying the jar.

I truly appreciate how well thought out this post is. However, it's one of those things where if you didn't have motivation in the first place, it's not going to work. I've tried atomic habits. I've tried different ideas from social media of grouping rooms and things into piles to sort.

Sure, I'll get it done... eventually. But no amount of gamification will motivate me to put this much effort into habitual cleaning. I hope the author's strategy helps someone, but it assumes you have the motivation but not the methodology.

One "trick" that helped me some times: If you don't make progress with a task, count breaking it down into subtasks as an accomplishment

> The rule is simple: the more you procrastinate on a task, the more you should break it down into micro-tasks, even ones that take just 2 to 5 minutes in extreme cases.

This.

When I catch myself procrastinating, it often helps immensely to push myself to at least subdivide a task on my todo list further. Then try to push myself to do one of them, and if I still resist, try to subdivide tasks further.

I then move the task to a Done list by pressing a keyboard combo.

The only purpose of my Done list is exactly providing feedback the way the article recommends.

I never look back over past days "Done" entries. My Done list exists only there so that when I marka task done on my TODO list, the Done file that's open on the same virtual desktop gets the entry added to the top, under today's date, so I get the satisfaction of seeing the list grow. I used to just strike them out in my TODO list, by I found I like it better to see the TODO list actually empty out.

I could probably just wipe it every morning, but it feels satisfying knowing I have the timestamped records even though I never look at them.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38, and never expected to hear that diagnosis. Main reason was my misunderstanding of what ADHD is. Like most people, I just naively associated ADHD with hyperactive kids, and thought I was just lazy and having procrastination issues.

Now that I understand it so much better, I start to recognise it everywhere. After reading first paragraph of the article, I immediately though: Laurie must have ADHD!

For ADHD the things that often help are: breaking tasks up into smaller tasks and having a way of tracking progress. You don't want to do that on a screen, your phone is a distraction device!

I write my to-do lists on a paper notebook so I can tick them off. But the label printer idea is also a smart one! Though maybe a bit over-engineered, but I guess that was just a way for Laurie to procrastinate on the solution ;-)

This idea really resonates. Like others have mentioned, there's a unique power to a physical artifact that a digital to-do list just can't replicate. I went down this exact rabbit hole a while back, trying to bridge the gap between my digital planning and physical, actionable "tickets." The setup part can be a bit of a pain, especially getting a printer reliably online and talking to it from different apps and services. This is the exact problem I built Printercow¹ to solve (author here!). It's a small service that lets you turn any thermal printer into a networked API endpoint with a one-line install command on a Raspberry Pi. The idea is to handle all the backend plumbing so you can focus on the fun part—triggering prints from Zapier, a script, or your own app to create a system just like the author's. Happy to answer any questions about the setup!

(¹) https://printercow.com

My mom carries with her a physical notebook in which one full page is one day. The left side of the spread is for the task list, the right side contains notes/comments. When a task is done it gets crossed over. When the day is over, she manually copies important leftovers to the next day. The other (flip) side of the notebook is for longer running projects, similar approach. Naturally, she has to replace the notebook a few times a year. She says the secret sauce is the tedium of copying the leftovers, that's how she finds the balance between over- and under-planning.

There's also a kind of super-cheap Bluetooth "Chinese" thermal receipt printers, also known as "kitty printer" or "cat printer". There's plenty of reverse-engineered software for printing to them in a number of languages; one I use is: https://print.unseen-site.fun/ The disadvantage is they don't cut automatically, and their "cutter teeth" are super crappy. But cheap!

I like how the author mentioned typing speed tests as a “warm up” to the day. I frequently find myself going to do a typing speed test when I’m at my desk but unable to work, and have often wondered why I do that and if anyone else does that.

This reminds me somewhat of a system by David MacIver: https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/using-a-list-to-manage-exec...

He builds his list from scratch every morning. The list is flat, so as you go about your day and subtasks occur to you, they are added to the list without explicit links to the main task.

I thought it might be risky to start with a blank list, because something important might be forgotten. But it turns out that a blank list is a great filter for what is truly important and motivating. If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day.

This system is also excellent for shorter periods of time. If I come home and want to get started on dinner, want to tidy up a bit and have a few other demands on my attention, I put my laptop in a central location, open up Notepad, and just start typing in everything I see around me that I need to do. Usually I start with maybe 5 items, but as I start doing things I quickly add tasks to the list, and it might grow to 15 or 20 items. But then at some point the list starts to shrink again as these small, granular tasks are completed. It is strangely satisfying to see the list initially grow and then shrink to nothing. It also leaves me with a feeling of having thoroughly attended to everything that was bothering me when I first walked in the door.

I like this simple model. There's 2 variables:

- pleasure

- achievements

Both reset daily. Both can be changed by each activity.

Well-being is calulated sth like this:

    def wellBeing(pleasureNow, pleasureSoFar, achievements):
        return pleasureNow/(pleasureSoFar+pleasureNow) + len(achievements)

It's weird, but it's how it works. If you did 100 small things it feels like you achieved much more than if you did one big thing.

And pleasure experienced is scaled by the pleasure experienced that day so far. Which means if you do 3 things that provided 1, 10, 100 pleasure - you'll experience ~2.8 pleasure, but if you do the same things in reversed order 100, 10, 1 - you'll experience ~1.09.

So ordering the pleasures and splitting the achievements matters A LOT for your well-being.

That's really cool. I will just add that in my experience, with a bit of conditioning it is possible to get this satisfaction from crossing things off digital lists. The benefits are manifold:

- It saves paper

- It's easier and faster to reprioritize tasks

- It's always with you in your pocket

Personally I use Apple Notes which has checklists, as opposed to a task management system or even Reminders. The flexibility of just writing things into a freeform note and hitting a button to turn them into todos is the right balance of low friction and just enough structure. Hitting that circle to check it off when done is actually quite satisfying.

Bonus: I added a keyboard shortcut for strikethru which adds some extra satisfaction of crossing off the task (or portions of a task that i've written out).

One trick I learned a while back to just sort of get my mind right first thing in the morning was to make my bed. I got it from a TV show, The Bridge, I think. It's such a small and seemingly insignificant act, but the routine is comforting and it feels good to have done something that will also bring me comfort when I go to lay down that night. It's nice coming to lay down in a nicely made bed.

I'd love to learn more of these sorts of little actions that bring calm and joy to my brain.

I did my version of this way:

1) 3x5 cards printed on a printer dedicated to this task 2) Command line routine where I can: a) Enter tasks b) Be able to update card by putting in the card number assigned to the task (which also includes a date). c) Be able to reprint a card if needed d) Be able to view the card on the screen (obviously).

Written in bash.

This is not to be clear to do things that are procrastination but rather to be able to keep track various things that I want to get done the next day or other info that I want physically able to view on my physical desktop during the day.

(I hate to handwrite and can type very well so...)

The 3x5 card printout will contact a checkbox where you can just ink check any item.

The routine makes sure that you only type in the correct number of characters per line so it doesn't wrap.

I then modified this to be able to use larger index cards.

Index cards lay flat on the desk (as opposed to a receipt printer).

Important to have a dedicated printer for this taks otherwise to much friction changing paper.

I found this tool helpful with breaking things down to as small steps as you need: https://goblin.tools/

Back at Polyvore we used real post-it notes on a board to track progress. We had a weekly cadence but the tasks were granular enough to be completed in a day or two. Each week we’d peel off and crumble the completed tasks into a bin. It was a really satisfying experience in a way that digital facsimiles can’t quite match.

I've also discovered that breaking down tasks into micro-tasks helps me get going on things. I've found that I get easily overwhelmed if I have a massive list of things to get done, and adding another task to it makes it even worse. However, just nesting tasks into parent tasks and finding the right "child" to place a new task in makes it feel more manageable, and I know that those nested tasks are typically small things that I can accomplish.

I use this system for my projects but I don't rely on any software other than a text editor. I like the app demo shown at the end of the article, but I find custom software never feels fast enough for jotting down tasks in the right place within a hierarchy as compared with a text editor. I just use a markdown file with indented lines to indicate nesting level. Once I complete a task, I put an x within a little box, like "- [x] bug: page layout ..."

It's very satisfying when you have a big task that's a little abstract and overwhelming at the start, but over time gets more and more subtasks as you dig into it, and then those subtasks get closed out one by one, leading you to finally close out the top-level task that started it all. The fact that the text of the subtasks remain also gives a quick indication just how big that task really was. (I don't delete completed tasks, but I do move them somewhere else in the file to keep it organized somewhat.)

I am not a mental health professional. But author may be suffering from mild depression and burnout. Vacation from electronics, online life and doing some of their hobbies would help a lot

Having not thought about it at this level, the feedback loop explains why my Bullet Journal works well for me. I can write down any task and break it down to any level of detail without worrying about software, which is nice, and I get a nice little reward when I cross off a bullet. I have used post-its in this way in the past and found that it's more effective than the bullet journal if I need a real kick in the pants. Also I move around a lot between home, office, and work trips. While post-its don't travel well, the phone apps just don't work for me.

When I need to coax my kids (7 and 10) into completing a tedious list of chores, like cleaning their room and playroom, practicing their instruments, and doing their homework, I also reach for the post-its. They each get their own color and we talk through the best way to break things down, arrange them in a backlog on the wall, set a timer, and agree to meet when the timer goes off to review our progress.

My worry about any new system, todolist, app etc is that when the initial busy of energy wears off I'll be back to square one. The novelty and energy that I have at the start is impossible to maintain, but I need novelty to engage with tasks

Thermal paper used for receipts is coated with endocrine disruptors. Touching them every day multiple times can decrease your testosterone levels. At least Rhonda Patrick says so: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/isteK4uQhQA

> Imagine an FPS where you only meet an enemy every 30 minutes. That wouldn't be engaging. The loop must repeat quickly to keep you interested.

False! Plenty of horror games have basically nothing happen most of the time but are very engaging (perhaps even too much so). Alien games are my go to example.

My problem is not only procrastination but motivation. Why should I be doing all these tasks? I appreciate having a clean house but having one isn't fulfilling or enjoyable. Am I just a work machine? I want to soar with the eagles not toll with the ants.

I feel like you could increase the visceral satisfaction of task completion by getting one of those old desk spikes to spear each task receipt onto when you’re done with it.

Congrats. Finding your flow is quite the journey for some people. Glad it worked out for you.

My flow is the right kind of coffee. It energizes and allocates. The lavazza espresso 100% arabica is the current that works. Try it out!

Interesting system. There is also a simpler idea, that works well for some people: at the end of each day, leave something simple and easy undone. Use it as a starting point for your work the next day. Doing that simple task gives you the initial momentum to start work the next day.

I've implemented something similar (but digital-only) which has been working for me lately. I have a script running continuously that monitors my Obsidian files for new due tasks, and whenever it detects one due today, it sends it to my notifications server. Now I have a notification for each thing I need to do today, which I keep up on my device(s) until I've completed the task, and then I clear it.

I am a compulsive notification-clearer so this mostly works for me. But I also have a receipt printer and have thought about doing something like this before, so I appreciated the ideas in the article! Maybe I'll rip up some scrap paper and try it that way (or just send the tasks to my printer instead of my notifications server, haha).

Great read. I'm sure I have some undiagnosed ADHD and I suffer from getting stuck into to work or executive dysfunction...the tactile effect of pulling the receipt paper down and chucking it in the bin must feel very satisfying.

Kinda like those chefs working the plating section. Order up!

I learned how to gamify work tasks from my mom.

She worked as a librarian in the seventies. Tasks like restacking books was not fun, so she turned it into a game. Her coworkers, on the other hand, drew out the boring tasks as long as possible. When it came time to pick someone for advancement, they chose my mom, because she was more productive at the menial tasks.

I also use post-it notes, but if I used them for everything, I don't think it would work for me. The reward is in pulling down the note and setting the wall cleaner. But if I were to add notes every day, I have a feeling the effect would be disheartening. Similarly, I love getting the living are clean, but when kids/family make a mess again within hours, I'm less incentivized.

> A simple solution is breaking tasks into smaller parts. Let's take an example everyone can relate to: cleaning the house.

Cleaning the house is fundamentally boring. It doesn't matter how many parts you split it into lexically — it's just inherently boring.

Get married, make a couple of children and a lot of life issues go away — you'll always have something to actually get done ASAP instead of just staring at a todo list and wandering around.

I just re-implemented your interface for managing tasks:

https://rafalkwasny.com/tasks

Prints on A4 page as I like it better

Coming to this a day late, but what immediately jumped to mind was David Seah's "Task Order Up" https://davidseah.com/node/the-task-order-up/ system.

My biggest concern (besides "following through with this? hollow laugh") is when you're not always working in the same place - either hybrid or going to customer sites.

I like the overall idea and glad it helped. OP, how do you feel about the waste produced by this? I would personally feel guilty to a good extent—curious to know how that goes for you.

I like it! For me, I can confirm that the smaller the task, the less likely it is for me to procrastinate on it. I also didn't know that receipt printers don't need ink, that's cool. On a similar note: me and my partner recently also started using an app that divides up the household chores into small tasks and schedules them for us (e.g. "today you have to vacuum the living room"). For us, this prevents conflicts and also frees the mind of having to keep track of those things.

For creative tasks this won’t work, the issue is with the many branching direction and dependencies each new idea creates that affects the system. I’m having great difficulty with this

> Modern games provide much stronger feedback. Now, when you hit an enemy, you might see:

> the crosshair briefly changes to confirm the hit, damage numbers pop up above the enemy, sound effects, enemy death animations, a progress bar filling up, a new skill unlocked, random reward and more...

I wonder if we can gamify todo apps in the same way, most are too boring and too corporate. It should implement all gaming bells and whistles for ensuring you complete your tasks.

Not bad. I have a stack of unused index cards. I just tried writing down some recurring household chores, one per card, with some instructions below the title. I'm now thinking of hanging two boxes -- todo, and done -- in the hallway, so that I can just pick up a task, complete it and then move the card from "todo" to "done". I suspect the wife will have no trouble moving the full stack from "done" to "todo" at the end of each week.

I've found that having tasks last 10 minutes is an activation energy economizer (with option to extend 2x10 or 3x10 if in flow). It also simplifies the overhead of deciding how long something should take. I think the key takeaway from it all is that one would benefit most from iterating on their system of choice, keeping what works and carrying it forward, instead of doing impassioned rip-ups or switching to entirely new systems frequently

> The rule is simple: the more you procrastinate on a task, the more you should break it down into micro-tasks, even ones that take just 2 to 5 minutes in extreme cases.

This breakup alone could allow someone who can procrastinate on something big but doesn't like to be burdened by many tasks the shortcut, without further gamification, of performing some micro-tasks either to reduce the queue or to "procrastinate" on the rest.

I'm going to try and see if this works better for me. The daily printout of "things that need to happen today" is a fun idea, especially if I could keep it by my bed and have it print off when my alarm goes off.

Are there any receipt-style printers that can directly print some kind of sticky note? I feel like that would be even more useful since you don't have to keep pins around, though I can see the running cost getting a lot higher

The analogy to video games and the need for fast, tangible feedback really lands for me. But I do wonder how sustainable is the receipt printer setup? The novelty and fun factor are real, but do you think you’d still get the same motivation after six months, or will it just become another background habit? (Not that "good habits" are bad, of course)

I have been TickTick for daily-habit tracking for years now. It has a monthly GitHub-like graph widget for phones which is amazing for feedback. I also use TickTick for misc. task-tracking like "laundry", "buy apple", etc.

Then for non-recurring areas like job-tasks, I use a separate tool with a simple Kanban board. Prior to Kanban, I used to just track time, and write a list of things I did for the day, but I realized there was no feedback and it was just a passive "I did this stuff".

So coming from that, a Kanban board has been god-sent. Because otherwise Parkinson's Law was a common occurrence for me. Each task in the board is somewhat tied to a project/outcome through a tag. So there is a feedback/working-backwards/active concept to it. I have just started using it, but the more I use it, the more I automatically learn how to set better tasks, because otherwise they do not go from TODO -> DOING -> DONE.

I think most competent games innately flashes you your progress constantly(levels, maps, story progress, upgrades) and also how easy you can start making progress after you started playing. This system is exactly doing that with the see through jar of finished micro sub tasks. In theory you can create your own “easy progress” flasher system that is tailored to you and would achieve this.

Get on it lol

This is immediately one of my favourite articles of all-time. It's well-written, visually appealing, and the subject matter is absolutely down my alley. I might actually just buy one and try this out.

I absolutely love how you show and tell, by having an article with an EXP system. But when do I get skill unlocks? I'm really hoping to be able to enjoy your next article with upgrades.

Oh this sounds amazing! This reminds me of a todo list app some indie dev has been running for years which has a ton of configuration parameters based on various psychological models for productivity. There were options for gamification, Getting Things Done, task breakdown. It was kind of expensive. Does anybody remember the name of this software? I’ve been trying to remember for a while.

> Write each task on a sticky note. When you finish the task, crumple the note into a ball and throw it into a clear jar.

I independently stumbled upon this same system. It sounds like the author takes it further than me (I don't create notes for routine/repeating tasks, and don't break them down so much—in a typical day I only complete around 2-3 notes).

I've used sticky notes for years, but ~6 months ago added the jar (prior to that I just recycled them). It helps to have a visual reminder that I'm making progress over the long term, even if it doesn't feel like it some days.

My current jar is just about full and I've been debating what to do with it. Save it as desk art? Find a bigger jar and transfer the notes? Burn them in a cathartic ritual? I'm open to suggestions.

Thermal printer paper is known to be a source of BPAs making this a potentially harmful way to produce hard copies of your todo list entries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_printer#Health_concern...

Having a to-do app that really pushes you to break down tasks into tiny pieces actually sounds really nice. I think that's the biggest takeaway for me here. The receipt print might seem a bit extra, but there's also something nice about having a physical motion to finish tasks while also not having to write everything out by hand. I dunno, writing doesn't actually take a long time. The post-its do feel a bit wasteful though, because they're so expensive.

For me, the keys are:

Break down tasks into micro-tasks. Doesn’t have to be written down.

Get my body involved. Take handwritten notes when reading.

Create micro-deadlines. Have short meetings with colleagues to share progress.

Inject mini-rewards. Do one 20-minute task. Then watch one music video on YouTube.

I could see room for a productivity app that smoothed out this workflow.

Is there a name for organizing things based on bite-size? I have something similar system for myself but literally use a text file with dashes. I tried workflowy and other tools but I keep coming down to using text files because of how fast it helps me to offload memory on a scratchpad.

Thank you for sharing, this is a very useful article. I believe I have procrastination; many times I prefer to put things off and don't want to do them until it's absolutely necessary. After reading this article, I think I should try to change this.

I used to sit in front of my task list and just stare at it. Then I tried the author’s approach and broke everything down into tiny game-like tasks. I printed each one on a little receipt printer. Every time I finished one, it felt like taking down a small boss, tear it off, and toss it. Suddenly the task list felt way less intimidating and much more efficient. Surprisingly, the ritual worked. I was able to stick to it and even started to get a small sense of accomplishment every day. Definitely more productive than my old habit of tackling huge chunks at once.

I've wanted a receipt printer for years just for giggles, after doing some custom integrations with them in medical labs. It turns out F**book marketplace in my area has some for movie night prices, just in case someone else is thinking along the same lines..

A colleague shared her productivity tool: Sticky Notes. She has them on her screen with the more immediate items listed on a sticky on the top right side of her screen. The one on its left has higher level / bigger items, and so on (a decimal system?). Her focus is on clearing out the top right one, and disassembling the higher level ones towards the right.

Postscript: Installing it on my laptop needed going through some IT bureaucracy. And my #1 procrastination creator is filling out forms. Guess they'll just keep paying me the same for less work.

People are intimidated by large tasks because they're thinking about the entire task all at once. This blog post points out the key element which is that you have to think about small easy tasks instead. Once you move your focus to small easy sub-tasks, it becomes much easier to start doing them because it's not hard.

The truth of the matter (especially with ADHD or HFA people) is that once you even start doing a small sub-task, you then quickly become addicted to or motivated to getting more and more of it done, and before you know it, you've gotten many sub-tasks done or even accomplished a large task you'd been procrastinating about.

The problem with methods like this is that there is no priority and rewards you for doing tasks that don’t actually matter. It’s better to do one really important thing per day than 10 meaningless tasks.

I am going to try this, usually Emacs and org mode helps me get things done.

How is this printer idea any different than a simple to do list?

To break down tasks one can simply indent a list.

A to do list gives feedback every time you cross an item of the list.

Sticky notes and printers seem like exaggerated form of a todo list.

If games work, why not gamify your idea? The printer and paper approach doesn't work well for people on the move. We need a pure online version that's accessible from everywhere: home, office, customer sites, vacation spots, and during commutes. Even better: add a voice interface too.

"Hey assistant, what do I have to do?"

"1. Send email to Bob"

"2. Clean your desktop"

"3. Read paper XYZ"

"...and more"

"OK assistant, set 1 as done"

"Congratulations, great job! You achieved the bronze badge this week by completing 70% of your tasks!"

Thanks for the tip. I struggle with my procrastination all the time. I use software like OmniFocus to breakdown my tasks and merge them into the projects, yet it never occurred to me to use the receipt printer for that. And your idea of using the jar for completed tasks is really nice.

Have you ever thought of assigning priorities to your tasks (like Eisenhower matrix or Franklin-Covey)?

I've been thinking gamification of my daily chores too and this article pops up! Amid health concerns of receipts, I think I'm gonna try this with just sticky notes and a jar. But how about making this a platform on its own, that just runs on a secondary monitor (I think everyone has one of those nowadays anyway). The idea is to just make this a GAME. For example, various stats of a player can be shown, history of every achievement, goals, chapters etc. Great article by the way!

I'm surprised nobody mentioned that these paper tickets have BPAs: Beat Procrastination Abilities.

On a serious note, the article so cool and well written. I appreciate demonstrating the gamification effect right on the page. When I finally get a receipt printer for tasks, I hope to implement timed reminders that print throughout the day.

And to be clear, I don't mean yet-another-source-of-notification-overload, I mean things like "Go eat lunch." Maybe some can relate to how helpful and delightful that might be :D

Social media, YouTube and television before them shows us that people don't need feedback in order to stay glued. You can drop the back and just give them a feed.

Any recommendation for a good thermal printer that works with macOS? This thread gave me a few ideas that I might hyper fixate on and then forget about in the span of a day or two.

Nice piece. You and I (and I know many others) have come to the same conclusion: (an old video of mine on breaking down tasks into tiny bites https://youtu.be/b3blsuTqN9s?si=W373y92JzDfHIDvS). No doubt informed by our good friend David Allen.

Ps, I linked to your article in my newsletter this week. Hope it sends some visits!

Won't comment on the procrastination aspect (if it works for her, that's great), but handling thermal receipt paper a lot is unhealthy according to some. I would want to use a plain-paper impact printer despite the noise that they make.

That BPA/analog ink is going to do your health no good. Estrogen-mimickers are not exactly your friend.

This reminded me a bit of a little Vision Pro demo someone made where you can pick up digital coins by vacuuming your house.

> If later in the day you notice you're starting to procrastinate, immediately return to the system.

This is by far the most insightful advice backed by actual research.

Recognizing a deviation in your desired behavior and having a prepared fallback plan for how to get back on track.

Could be as simple as - if I catch myself scrolling on the phone I will put the phone down and standup.

You lost me at preparing the notes the night before. Yeah, that will definitely happen.

I haven’t finished reading this yet, but the rewards bar at the bottom of the site is a really cool touch.

Appreciate the quest indicator on the article :-)

Your blog reminded me of “Linear RPG”: you run along a line to collect XP. It’s a flash game.

https://sophiehoulden.com/games/thelinearrpg/

Great article, Laurie. Can you provide more technical details on the software you used to send tasks to print?

This is a great, simple breakdown of how to improve motivation. I would love to have this at home!

I write individual tasks (or steps of larger tasks) on index cards. When a task is done, I stick the index card on a receipt spike.I limit WIP myself to 3 index cards at a time.

That’s really clever. I have never thought of a thermal printer before to spam out tasks.

I do something like this, but use notes in Evernote. Making them physical objects wouldn't add anything for me personally. (My wife loves writing down and crossing out to-dos on paper though. To each their own.)

This is my first comment. I felt compelled to write. As a person with ADHD your article is too long. But thanks for motivating me to get on hacker news

something that I did some time ago, if the printer is able to print images, you can generate an HTML page, screenshot it and than print it. The print will be much better and you can play with a lot more things

Okay why not…

One part that is not addressed is procrastination because of tasks that are scary.

I think I have fairly low levels of anxiety in general, but there are things I know I need to do but I’d just rather ignore them because they somehow terrify me.

Things like “call someone to negotiate a price”, or “find a holiday place to rent when I know it’s already too late”, or “reverse-engineer what this giant pile of untested legacy code does, rebuild it in something else, and make sure everything works like before”.

I am 100% sure I’d rather let the receipt printer take a day off than tackling any of these.

You just need to switch of job, if you don’t feel rewarded when doing it then it’s just not the right fit for you. And even then, something fun can become boring later on.

I know electricians for instance who love doing their stuff, so they have no issue in being motivated, while they were a mess in their previous work field.

And vice versa.

It’s not always possible of course, but the solution is not to ‘gameify’ your life, it will only work for a little while before getting bored of it.

And for the « home » task, I believe it’s more of a routine. If you know every Saturday morning will be to clean the whole house, you just do it without thinking much.

does anyone know how i get a bluetooth reciept printer (STAR TSP100iiiBI) to register as a default print device in android (12)? presumably i have to install something that bridges the ip address request in default printer settings with transmitting to the bluetooth device...

Procrastination never really gets cured. It just gets put off til later.

Does anybody else feel like he has invented pomodoros and todo.txt

THAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING THAT COULD WORK. Does anyone have an idea or know of a 100% digital alternative? I work in different locations, so using a printer isn't an option

How is this printer system any different than keeping a simple do to list??

Yeah but why do we all have a huge unplayed Steam backlog? ;)

Pretty cool. It’s interesting to see how the receipt printer evolved from your post-it system.

One suggestion- mention the printer earlier in the post. It took so long to get around to it that I started wondering if the link was wrong.

Hook the receipt printer up to an LLM and the takeover is complete.

Has anyone tried using an LLM to tackle procrastination?

I thought receipt paper is pretty bad due to BPA ?

The progress bar along the bottom of the page (in mobile at least) is fun

Very interesting writeup OP!! This sounds like something definitely worth trying!!

“actional tasks” but the printer is kind of fun. You need a “manager” / planner / architect in order to create those tasks though.

Clarity is key

Very interesting writeup OP!! This sounds like something definitely worth giving a try.

Don't these thermal paper give you cancer?

> It's harder to procrastinate on something physically in front of you.

Oh you sweet summer child.

OMG its so long. I'll read it later

I've never understood why people have "work procrastination" problems. I've never had to play games to get myself to do work. You're paid to do a job, so do the job. Is this a generational thing and is it really that big of a problem?

I've worked remotely since 2016-ish and still can't comprehend why this is an issue.

What does it say about me that I stopped reading the article to play with the progress bar down at the bottom right?... And now I'm writing this comment before finishing the article.

This gives me strong Scrum vibes.

I need it NOW for me and for me company

Literal tickets.

So she turned herself into an automaton.

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email?

OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun. And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation to the work to get it to hit harder: Working by others (social/peer), snacks (biological rewards), free caffeine, money (sometimes lots), etc. And physical trinkets.

We have studied this to death in other parts of our own biology, like food. Unhealthy food/drink is fun. It's a pleasurable reward sometimes, but if it forms the basis for your diet you are going to have a lot of trouble enjoying healthy stuff. You can't outrun a bad diet. You can't add a kale salad after a bowl of ice cream and expect your insulin levels to go down. You have to treat the underlying problem: A hugely stimulating / rewarding thing is displacing the healthy stuff. Almost every piece of sane health advice after 1900 has focused on removing unhealthy factors first.

Work/hobby is no different. When I'm obsessed with factorio (it happened a lot once or twice), I find it harder to focus on work. When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well.

I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. We all have our vices.

happen to have a receipt printer sitting right next to me. gonna try this

I opened this is another tab and will now procrastinate to read it for a few weeks.

I don't want to be a downer on this because it sounds like a cool system, but it might be worth checking whats in the receipt paper as a lot of it is pretty bad for you:

https://toxicfreefuture.org/press-room/new-study-finds-toxic...

A while ago, I tried writing tasks on sticky notes at home and crumpling them up to toss in the trash once they were done. It felt pretty satisfying at first, but writing each note took too much time, and I eventually gave up.

Now that I’ve seen the idea of using a thermal printer to print out little task tickets, it instantly feels like a much easier system. I’m planning to get one next week and see if it actually helps me get started more easily than writing things by hand.

Great article and great system.

A little out of scope since the article wasn’t about the finer points of ADHD but I’ve always wondered if we’re being disingenuously hard on ourselves by labeling it a disorder.

So many people show the symptoms and they’ve only gotten worse as the world has become more complicated that it seems less like a problem with the individual and more like an natural effect of putting what are essentially still caveman brains in a world of flashing lights, vibrating phones and notification noises.

I had a similar experience when I decided to use a pencil and paper, along with a few simple rules, to manage my to-do lists. This method worked so well for me that I started thinking about the reason for its success. These are my conclusions:

- It was MY method

- It was simple enough to fit entirely within one piece of thought

- It provided a clean feedback loop when I could strikeout the completed task

- I like handwriting

So it relied on things that my brain finds pleasurable

> The only way I could get things done was by relying on stress, coming from clients or financial pressure. That worked for a while, but it cost me my health (I burned out)

I’ve seen this called something like “using your adrenaline as adderall”

https://www.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/comments/1ifdwwn/youve_be...

> I plan to release my software publicly in the coming weeks. You can subscribe to my newsletter to get notified when it's available.

i think a fun challenge for any new vibecode tool youve heard of but havent tried is to just make this. it cant be that hard... (famous last words)

got hit hard by that jar thing. just plain receipts piling up. no fancy tracking, no filters, it's not even a todo list, it's a physical backlog you can't mute. stack grows, pressure builds. brain stops negotiating. most tools hide your mess with tabs and swipes. this one prints your laziness and puts it in a jar. that's brutal. that's honest.

I've always been a list maker. It feels good to put a check mark next to a finished item. I once read an article declaring that list making can turn into a form of bondage. I thought this might have value, so I quit making lists. This was a mistake, because without the list I had problems prioritizing tasks. (And I'm a little forgetful.) Things get done when I list.

this sticky notes method likely works well when it comes to breaking down tasks into small pieces. I struggle on that sometimes but I think I struggle more when the task is inherently boring like exercise with long (boring) rest periods or the outcome is uncertain, like working on software with no users. In this case I think I would procrastinate on making the sticky notes too

I just tried bite sized task post it notes. It’s incredible. The gamification is like the notice boards in the Witcher 3.

I love this! definitely inspired, I'm quite good at using a journal but there's a lot I lose track of

First some feedback (I see the author is interested), and then a personal take on how I deal with this stuff.

As someone who has spent decades procrastinating, reading about systems to get things done, trying many of them, working with coaches and mentors, and teaching project management, I like to think have a cultivated interest in the topic. I’m very happy that the author found something that works for them. I’m not a gamer, so I didn’t find the comparison particularly relatable. What I did find relatable was the point about getting the dopamine hit (I know that’s debated, but let’s use it as a metaphor) off crumpling up the paper and throwing it away. That’s something I always found gratifying about a physical board full of sticky notes, and it’s just not as rewarding to mark a ticket done in Jira.

In my personal experience of ADD, novelty is a major motivator. A system like this has the appeal of all sorts of new sources of stimulation - physical objects, a new electronic toy, software to write, etc. The problem is that once that wears off, if I’m only doing it for the novelty, I won’t stick with it. I need to engage some of the other sources of motivation (interest, challenge, urgency).

Also, I would love to see someone write an article like this where they keep it entirely in the first person. In other words, focus on “my experience” and “I do this” and “this works for me”. I experience a sort of automatic pushback when I read things like “this will help you” or “you need to”. It may be linked to demand avoidance, or just my belief that there is not a single productivity system or hack that works for everyone. “You need to” try things out, reflect on your own personal struggles, and tailor the solutions to fit. Also, I’m not sure if I would ever call it a cure.

Something I’ve found very helpful is an app called Llama Life. It is not free, so stop reading if that’s a deal breaker. I think of it as kind of a pomodoro timer that someone cleverly fixed for me. I find pomodoros appealing, but they never worked for me. With Llama Life, I stack up what I plan to do for the day along with a guess at how long each task will take. The first benefit this has is that I know what I’m meant to be working on. And when the timer goes off, if I’m not done, I can snooze or extend it, or cut my losses and move on. The other thing I like is that it shows me the total amount of time I’ve allocated, and when each item ends. This helps me to avoid overcommitting: when I look at the end time and see 9:30 at night, I’m forced to reevaluate and cut some things. Anyway, I’m a happy customer.

100% lost me at “typing warmup and shortcut practice”. Thx for validating the old “if you know one person with ___, you know one person with ___.”

If it is just chores, gamifying it with a receipt printer would be just fine. But these are just such minor stuff compared to the real challenges of life.

Super cool idea !! Todo list tend to be kinda overwelming, because cross out an item leave it on the list. I tried to do a todolist (on a text editor) and just delete the element when it's done, but it's far less satysfing than juste throwing it in a glass

I have ADHD, and my daughter was recently diagnosed as well.

Been reflecting on this post as it's been soaking up the front page for the last 24 hours.

I want to commend you for shipping maybe the perfect HN post:

- Personal Journey

- Old school hardware

- DIY software

- Productivity hack

- Great title

- Quantified results (2-3x productivity) over non-trivial duration (few months)

- A low-effort offline solution that delivers real value for the 98% who will never build the thing

- Great polish on the reading experience with lots of little details

- Effective call to action (subscribe to get the software in a few weeks)

You inspired me to get my organization back on track. After researching receipt printers for 30 minutes, I realized what I actually need is to dust off the system that has worked for me in the past. But I'm picking up some post-its today and my daughter and I are going to try implementing your system for her over the weekend.

Thank you for putting the time into this!