Does anyone have a reliable system for creating artificial deadlines?
There are no external constraints on my work. When one artificially arises, I get my best work done, quickly. It doesn't burn me out because a rest comes afterwards.
I have no idea how to replicate this urgency consistently.
This is the point behind Agile with its two/three week deadlines. You take a day, set your goal and break down the tasks for your sprint and have a quick scrum every day to make certain you're on track.
The nice thing about it is that it stops you from getting distracted on a constant basis and you have something done at the end of your sprint.
Stuff like beeminder or stickK lets you pledge money to achieve a goal, which creates a real deadline for you. Beeminder works better with regular tasks, but you can probably use it for one-offs too.
The drawback with pomodoro in Programming is Flow - If it takes even 5 minutes to "ramp up" your brain back into the problem space, then you're throwing away 10 minutes every half hour (and that estimate was highly optimistic) - and you're doing that deliberately.
Much better to eliminate distractions, in my experience (selective site blocker, headphones with white noise or coffee noise or wordless trance, and an IDE that never stalls.)
Yeah, I use pomodoro. I'm thinking more of productivity over a 1-3 day period. Maybe I just need better default habits, when I use pomodoro consistently I'm very productive.
I don't think I'm a perfectionist, and agree it is to be avoided.
I don't think there is a way to consistently improve your total output without side effects. I worry that this chase for productivity always comes with negative fallout, and people neglect it when pursuing 'more output'. Better output, perhaps? More output? Probably unsustainable.
You could try a Personal Kanban with a very low work-in-progress limit (maybe 3 or less?). This would help you create a rule to force yourself to finish one task before being able to start another, lest you go over your WIP limit.
Could you go into more detail on this? It sounds interesting. I think one problem I have is that I have too many projects and I'm not good at bringing just a small number into focus.
There are no external constraints on my work. When one artificially arises, I get my best work done, quickly. It doesn't burn me out because a rest comes afterwards.
I have no idea how to replicate this urgency consistently.