Keegan C Smith

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This hits on a practice I’ve always recommended to people: build a list of actionable tasks, offline download the resources you need, and utilize poor internet situations as a place of extreme focus. In the early 2010s I wrote a ruby script to download all my GitHub issues, then I’d work on them offline on the airplane. I did this because airplane WiFi was really bad then and it was also pretty expensive and saving that money was meaningful to me then. But I realized quickly that it was just generally a really good practice. I’d land, push, and close a dozen or more issues. I started doing this at coffee shops and making it a point to just turn my WiFi off! I still continue to do this today. I build a list of tasks that I can complete in at most an hour. If an issue is more complex I do the planning and thinking ahead of time and break it down. Then I turn off WiFi and turn on do not disturb and get to work. I’ll turn WiFi back on between tasks. This works really well for me. I’ve shared this technique before but it’s definitely one of my best kept “open” secrets of how I get some things done so productively.