🤖 Getting Things Done

👋 Hello friend

In this week's edition, you can find the following:

• 💡 Focusmate: Virtual co-working for Getting Things Done

• 🐝 Beeminder: An App that combines self-tracking and commitment contracts: didn't achieve your goal? They take your money.

• 🎧 Optimizing for mental and physical performance | Podcast Episode w/ Dr. Humberman and Tim Ferris

• ⛄ Last couple of days, I tried out different lakes and rivers at ~ 5C°

Over the weekend, I got more To-Do's done than in the previous 6 months.

I would NOT say that I am a dedicated person when it comes to administrative tasks.

Like a fruit fly wanting to get outside, bumping its head against the window again and again, I had the same approach trying to even start with my 30 Items To-Do List.

My old approach: I must inform myself about the newest productivity tools, apps, and other tricks that Reddit stores.

If you do what you always do,
you get what you always get.
- Albert Einstein

💡 Focusmate: This website matches you with another person who wants to complete their most important tasks.

It creates this atmosphere of a library, (you just have and want to work), except you don't have to leave the room!

A Step-by-Step Guide on How to use Focusmate

Step #1. Book a session in the Calendar on the website.

Choose a 25-, 50-, or 75-minute session.

#Step 2. You will be assigned a person from the community to the scheduled time. Tell your "focusmate" what you will work on for this session.

#Step 3. Focus time. Mute yourself and let the work begin.

#Step 4. After the session ends, you can reflect with your buddy on how the session went.

I know; I also thought: That's it?

Simple, but so damn effective.

If you want to go deeper into the leveraging science to help you focus and get stuff done, I'd suggest checking out the page where they explain things like social pressure, accountability, and the flow experience.

🐝 Beeminder, for the analytical, graphs and statistics-loving super nerds: You pledge money. If you achieve your goals, you keep it. If not, you lose it.

There are 2 types of people.

🥕 The one rabbit runs because it wants to eat the carrot. (Towards-Goals, using pleasure or reward)

OR/AND

☝ The other rabbit runs because it fears the stick. (From-Goals, using punishment)

Beeminder uses the second methodology: They are punishing you with a stick if you don't achieve what you have committed to. (stick = taking your money)

And it is damn effective.

Let's say you want to eat 3 portions of vegetables every day.

At the end of the day, you enter if you managed to stick to your goal or not.

If you did, good for you.

If not, depending on how strictly you set it up, they charge $5 from you. The amount get's higher from not following through to not following through.

One integration lets you connect Beeminder to your smartwatch. Currently, I am trying to walk 10.000 steps daily. The data from my smart watch then syncs to Beeminder and presents the data in different graphs, of course, using punishment for this habit too.

🎧 Favourite podcast episode of the week
Dr. Andrew Huberman and Tim Ferris discuss the 5 fundamentals of mental and physical performance.

What stuck to my mind the most:

“Sleep, nutrients, exercise, light, relationships—those really establish the foundation of what I consider to be all of the elements that create our ability to move as seamlessly as possible between the states that we happen to be in and the states we desire to be in.”
— Dr. Andrew Huberman

“If we don’t actually take the time to figure out what’s going on in our head, how can we really trust that we’re on the best path?”
— Dr. Andrew Huberman

⛄ For the last few weeks, I have been trying out different lakes and rivers as long as they are still cold.

They were between 5-10C°, so still in a tolerable range.

Here are a few photos from last week.

Have a great week!

xx Lukas

Note: I am not affiliated with either Beeminder or Focusmate; I want to share my experience. That's it :)