1. Establish a sensible development environment.
It will be simpler to kill the opposition if you are more knowledgeable about the tools at your disposal. To be clear, the distractions that disrupt your workflow are the enemy. You must only take brief breaks to look up a library or a tool you can use in the project if you want to stay productive.
Learn about the tools you use and the development environment you work in. The editor you use to write code must be intimately familiar to you. Be aware of all shortcuts, including the quickest ways to refactor, autocomplete code, and function searches.
2. Prioritize, divide, and then conquer.
You can only work for a set number of hours. You can't design the entire interface, add every feature, or fix every bug in one day. It is here that you must prioritize tasks using your time management abilities.
Divide large tasks into manageable smaller ones. Your mental state will be affected because you'll feel good about yourself after each success and you'll be working hard. On the other hand, if you attempt to do everything at once, you won't accomplish anything, and as the hours pass, pressure will mount and productivity will drop.
Make a list of your to-dos and prioritize them. Be honest with yourself about how much work you can complete in a day.
3. Continue to learn
Although it might not seem like one of the best productivity hacks, regularly updating your skills will increase your productivity. You develop into a programmer who solves issues more quickly and effectively as your knowledge and experience grow. Naturally, you develop your productivity skills and discover the techniques and habits that work best for you.
It's crucial to develop yourself and look into new tools to speed up the process. Engaging in hobby projects or open source initiatives is a fantastic way to advance your career. As you pick up new skills, you can overcome obstacles more quickly and work more efficiently.
4. Eliminating Distractions
Distractions are one of the biggest enemies of productivity, whether they come from cell phone notifications, disrespectful coworkers, or a weary and reflective mind. The successful programmer must avoid this villain, so let's learn about some tools to do so:
- Set up a functional workspace
When I'm in a neat, organized environment versus one that's disorganized, I've noticed a significant difference in my productivity.
- Set up your computer
Do you have a desktop that contains thousands of icons? Is your file and folder organization completely haphazard (like final1,final2,final3)? Perhaps it's time to begin revising this statement to keep your work tool as sharp as it ought to be.
- Turn off notifications
You're programming, laser-focused when a notification appears in your browser saying that another chapter of One Piece Manga has been released. You lose focus and go there to read the manga, then end up scrolling on Facebook, and when you return to the codes, you have no idea what Task you were doing (20 minutes passed, and you lost the context). Is this something that has happened to you? Many times, I've been with you.
- Keep It Clean
"I discovered that the best practice is to finish each day with a clean desk policy and a list of tasks to complete the following day using a fairly simple tool." This means that I start each day fresh and ready to tackle the day at hand, rather than worrying about the chaos I left the night before.
Wherever possible, do not finish in the middle of something to avoid confusion or lost work, and instead start something new that you can start and finish within your assigned working hours. Keeping this clean desk helps keep my mind clean and keeps me focused on each attainable goal." Rorie Devine's
- Disregard Smartphone
Do you use your smartphone to play games or watch social media at work? Have you ever squandered hours doing something like this? Most of the time, this is a great way to waste time and energy (every decision you have to make costs some of your energy).
5. Energy management
To be a productive programmer, you must first program yourself, so some points beyond code (and task management) must be addressed. Let's visit a few of them:
- The key is to take frequent short breaks
Numerous studies show that taking breaks between tasks increases productivity. Breaking up your coding sessions can help you focus, improve your creativity, reduce stress, and improve your overall well-being.
The Pomodoro Technique is one technique that developers can use. It is a simple time management technique used by programmers. The Pomodoro technique divides your work intervals into 25-minute sessions separated by 5-minute breaks.
You take a 20 to 30-minute break after every four 25-minute work sessions. It is a technique that has been used by the developer community for decades and will work for you as well. Take breaks to relax your eyes, stretch your muscles, walk around, or chat with friends and coworkers. When you return to work, you will be mentally and physically refreshed, allowing you to focus more on the task at hand.
- Get plenty of rest
When coding, your main tool is your mind, and if it isn't rested, you'll be slamming your face on the keyboard instead of producing what you really wanted. Maintain a reasonable sleep schedule (some people need 5 hours of sleep, some need 9 hours of sleep, so understand your limits).
- Perform exercises
Physical activities have not been a part of my life for a long time, and I admit that I underestimated the importance of staying current. But, after being inspired by some books in recent years, I decided it was time to start moving around a little. Today, I realize that my focus has improved, and the sport's "just a little longer, you can do it" mentality has helped me stick to the codes.
6. Rewrite Your Code
Rewrite your code at least once. This appears to be ineffective, but I am not alone. As a routine part of every task, Robert C. Martin advises serious developers to refactor not only newly introduced code but also existing code. This will keep quality high, which is where project lifetime productivity comes from being able to react quickly to changes, dealing with the unexpected, and making it simple for colleagues to take over for one another.
7. Document Your Code
Be it code, architectural design, some magic tricks for your compiler, etc. This is important when you work in a team. A lot of the time, your co-worker will ask you for things that you have explained zillion times to the other co-workers but him. If you have to keep explaining it to everyone, it will suck your time like a black hole. You don’t want to spend too much explaining the same thing over and over, but at the same time, you want to be helpful and get respect from your peers.
8. Speed up your typing
When it comes to getting your thoughts into your code editor, your words per minute are a bottleneck. The fastest programmers I know are incredible types who navigate their code solely with their keyboards.
Ask yourself why every time you reach for your mouse. Then, for that action, learn the keyboard shortcut. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts to navigate to different tabs, scroll to line numbers, shift lines up and down, search your repository, and do anything else you do frequently.
9. Avoid Multitasking
We were taught that doing multiple things at the same time is wise and beneficial. But this is not the case. People who multitask perform worse at all of the tasks they attempt.
Jumping between tasks is known as context switching, and it can be detrimental to your productivity. Developers, it turns out, are particularly vulnerable to context switching.
According to one study, developers spent only six minutes on tasks before switching and completed 13 tasks per hour on average. How much real progress can you make in six minutes?
Focus on one thing at a time to be efficient and effective. Don't try to construct six different components at the same time. Complete one before moving on to the next.
10. Automate
If you find yourself doing the same task over and over, like writing your code snippets, find a way to automate it. To run tests, code linters, and other node scripts regularly, use task runners such as npm scripts.
Developers spent a lot of time in the early days of responsive design creating desktop, mobile, and tablet versions of all their images. That can all be automated now! If you use Prismic, you can transform all of your images on the fly using URL parameters, saving you a ton of time. You can even use services like imgix or Cloudinary to automatically generate social images!
Whatever you're automating, make sure it's worth the time investment.
11. Make use of Code Snippets.
Code snippets are an excellent way to accelerate development.
I'm confident you'll find some code for every popular IDE, language, and framework. The following is a list of VS Code snippet plugins. If you find yourself typing the same thing over and over, you can even create your snippet. Snippet plugins make it easy.
If you use VS Code, try GitHub's CoPilot. It's not perfect, but it's excellent at autocompleting and building things from comments or good function names. It won't write your entire app for you, but it can handle the tedious boilerplate code.
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