Hello there, welcome back to my blog. Every developer go through burnout and stress, the worst and heartbreaking of all of them is not being productive, you may be shipping a product or building something as small as a calculator, but being productive and been able to finish that task not just on time but also very well gives some sense of satisfaction. Most developers often complain of not being productive while some complain about how their productivity drops as the day goes by. In this article, we are going to learn 5 ways we can improve our dev productivity.
1. Focus on one thing at a time
I mean it when I say it, most developers and human, in general, thinks being able to multitask and do million of things at the same time is what makes you productive. That is a big lie.
By simply picking a task for a day and finishing it to the very end before moving to another is a proven way of being very productive. The same productivity is what the 80/20 rules talk about, what is that 20% task you can take that would produce 80% result, you just have to find it and focus on it for the rest of the day, weeks, or month as the case may be, then you can move to another task.
2. Break your task
Just like in programming, this applies to also our work. Break your task into a smaller unit and start small. If your task is to build a full video player application, you can start breaking it down:
- Day1 – Brainstorm on the process.
- Day2 – Make the HTML markup. e.t.c
With this, you are able to keep track of your progress and become productive by achieving each task daily. Bombarding yourself with the whole process in one day can lead to mental stress, burnout, and fatigue which in turn can lead to depression when you are unable to meet this heavy task. So break it down!
3. Block distracting apps/websites
According to research carried out by RescueTime, the average digital worker can’t go more than 6 minutes without checking their email or instant messaging. The digital nature of our work and social lives leaves us constantly checking for notifications and this constant distraction hampers our ability to focus on tasks for even short periods of time.
This really has to change. To be very productive, developers need to minimize and control the amount of time they spend on other apps and websites.
There are a number of website and app blocker tools on the market and this is one of the key features in Serene, too. You create a list of apps and websites (you can block individual pages, too), which will automatically be blocked during work sessions. You can even prevent notifications from coming through during work hours and they’ll automatically come in once the session has finished.
4. Choose your tools right
As software engineers, we are bombarded daily with different tools from different angles, Javascript alone can boast of 10 frameworks for frontend development. Can you imagine? your job as a developer who wants productivity is to pick one of the many tools available that you are most comfortable with and use it, to avoid moving from one framework to another. The same applies to programming languages. I have heard about Bootstrap, Bulma, Materialize e.t.c but I choose to go for TailwindCSS, the one I am most comfortable with.
5. Create a dedicated workspace.
This one is crucial if you work from home or remotely. Don’t just sit on the couch or at the dinner table; create a dedicated workspace where you can go to work and then leave it once you’re done.
This also includes using the right hardware, for example, you can’t learn and train a Machine learning model on a computer with an Intel Atom processor. Not that Intel Atom is a bad processor but it is not the right hardware for machine learning. So pick the hardware that best suits your work and you are good to go.
Conclusion
These are tested ways and I have used them in my work and I noticed some improvement from my end so I decided to share.
