I don't have much to say on the topic, since it is somewhat new for me. I don't have best practices yet. But it's been somewhat remarkable.
Through quitting, blocking distractions, etc, I pushed most of my "very bad distraction time" close to zero. I still get distracted, but it's Wiki-walking and reading history, researching a topic too long, research stocks and reading financial statements, reading, or doing low-ish value work. None of which are very bad.
I also looked at my efficiency, and got it up reasonably high.
Both of the above can be credited largely to time tracking -- analyzing where time goes and how long it takes to accomplish things.
But I hit the point where time tracking was wearing out in value somewhat. I have clearly defined things to do, I am working a lot, now what?
So I experimented with ceasing to track time in the short term and replaced it with this --
Now, as soon as I realize I have the intention to do something significant, I write down what result I'm targeting for it, and an arrow. It might be something like:
Starting writing on Courtesy piece, targetting draft 1 today -->
Then, when I'm done, I write what happened.
Starting writing on Courtesy piece, targetting draft 1 today --> started the piece, got 500 words down, but my mind got a little shattered... pushed through and got to 600 words and sort of finished, but it needs a lot of work
I record what actually happens and how the results go. For instance, from today --
Comment all of Zach Obront’s GGW copy —> started commenting, but then internet gave out, but I kept going anyways and finished it
It was a Google doc, and the internet giving out almost stopped me because it froze up. Then I realized the intention was to finish it, so I made edits outside the doc of where to insert them, and continued.
As soon as I'm confused on some action, I go clarify the result. For significant things, if I forgot to mark down an intention beforehand, I guess what my intention was or write down the action, and the result.
Real examples over the last week (some edits made):
Gym —> Light cardio, decent resistance training
Time with Kai —> Excellent learning and concept-making [primarily a social meeting]
Writing, creating Philosophy/Strategy/Tactics/Ops piece —> failed at this one, I don’t understand it clearly enough
Writing, shifted gears into writing Thresholds/Friendship —> Success, wrote a great ~2000 word piece.
Prep for [XX social] call —> Didn’t prep all that well. [a failure, noted it down]
So you see, I'm marking down intention, and then successes/failures/outcomes.
Sounds simple, seems to work really well. Advantages --
1. Measures results instead of time.
2. Gives an objective look at what got done. I used to celebrate when I had a day that I put a lot of minutes/hours into GiveGetWin, but now I realize oftentimes a two hour meeting or call only achieved one small-ish thing, and sometimes a 20 minute call achieves a lot more. It's clear when the time is stripped out.
3. Notes failures and lack of good preparation well, and gives clues as to why things failed.
4. Gives a clear record of what's achieved.
5. Forces instant analysis if things fail.
6. Gives a setpoint for bringing the mind back around if it wanders.
It's pretty good. I'd recommend general time tracking if you haven't already eliminated most distractions and sped your production up by looking for greater efficiencies, but then measuring target --> result seems to training my mind differently and getting more, well, results.
It's new for me, so I can't say if I'll stick with it, but I can say it's already made gains in my thinking and workflow that I expect to be at least semi-permanent, so a definitely worthwhile exercise to do for a while.