Best Ways to Boost Developers & Programmers Productivity
“Focus on being productive instead of being busy.” Tim Ferriss summarized it best in this quote. We would like to believe that being busy and being productive are synonymous, but that’s not always the case. It is easy for programmers to appear or feel busy without actually accomplishing anything. It doesn’t add value to spend too much time reading emails or doing mundane tasks.
In software engineering, productivity is more important than ever before. We look for indicators of how efficient a product is all the time, but we overlook the most obvious one: developers.
When you are productive, you produce high-quality work that helps you complete key tasks or move closer to achieving your goals. In contrast, being busy means you don’t have much free time because you’re always juggling too many tasks – regardless of whether they’re productive.
A developer with high energy not only gets more done in less time but also spreads a positive vibe around the office, which improves the team’s performance – It predicts how the final product will turn out. Productive developers/programmers are more likely to earn more money by completing excellent work in less time. They also have a better work-life balance, and are happier internally, too.
An individual can go whole days without producing anything tangible to show for their efforts. You don’t want to be known as someone always busy. The adoption of specific work habits and ethics is necessary to maintain long-term productivity. After a while, these ways become routine.
Here are some practical methods for making your work and life as a developer more productive. What can you as a programmer do to become more productive instead of being busy? Along the way, we’ll offer you some concrete suggestions that can help you embrace those ideas.
Tip 1: Knowing Your Development Environment
Become more familiar with your development environment and tools. Know your editor as well as you do yourself. What are some quick tips for finding a class or refactoring a method? What is the quickest way to modify a text file? (learn regex). Refrain from re-inventing the wheel.
Learn how to use all the libraries available in the language(s) you choose. You should write an example for each library. If necessary, you can refer to those examples again. A library can be confusing at first, but once you get used to it,
- Because you’ll be more likely to remember to use it when the occasion arises,
- by learning how to use it, you’ll be less likely to create your own.
Additionally, knowing your IDE’s ins and outs will not only speed up but also improve your productivity by allowing you to use keyboard shortcuts. As a developer, you spend the majority of your screen time in the IDE. Understanding it will increase your efficiency and enhance your productivity.
Tip 2: Maintain Short and Clean Code Blocks
Code blocks should be tidy and concise. It’s frustrating to try to recall what you did two months ago and what needs to be fixed. Having a lot of methods and classes can make it difficult to figure out the original logic. Knowing the names of variables, methods, and classes is crucial to understanding code. If you break things down into smaller code units, you can come up with more meaningful names. Because our brains can’t keep up with the complicated logic of a 400-line procedure, we have hard-to-find errors.
Tip 3: Invest Time in Learning New Tools
The tools you use to define your working style. It is important to learn new tools while mastering the ones you already have.
Depending on their field of expertise, developers have specific requirements. The list of tools every developer need is not definitive. The tools a developer needs are different for each project. In large part, it depends on your tech stack; a Java developer uses different tools than a Python developer. While the technology stack may be the same, each developer has their preferences. Spend some time determining which tools you can use and which tools you prefer.
The goal is to find as many instruments as possible that will help to eliminate manual and repetitive labour. We now come to our next point.
Tip 4: Whenever Possible, Automate
The majority of occupations involve repetitive tasks. Programming is not an exception to this rule. Programming is likely to be one of the vocations that can automate most of the monotonous tasks you have to do.
As much as possible, automate tasks to save time completing time-consuming and manual tasks. Initially, writing a script to automate a specific operation will take some effort, but in the long run, it will pay off.
Having repetitive chores makes work monotonous and negatively impacts productivity. Automating your business is a one-time investment that pays off in the long run.
- If you are an app developer, setting up a Bitbucket Pipeline or Fastlane will help you save a lot of time as you watch the build process.
- Alfred is a great addition to macOS, as it allows users to define a variety of custom actions.
The reason for this isn’t just that you’ll save a few minutes by not doing some tasks manually. Plus, you won’t have to interrupt your concentration to complete some tedious task you’ve done a million times before. With automation, you can focus on the more important tasks rather than the mundane ones.
Tip 5: Walking away from your computer at the right time is essential
Coding for several hours can be exhausting, especially if you are doing it for a long time. Sometimes, you may find yourself staring at your computer screen, unable to solve the problem.
As stated previously, productivity is not equivalent to hours spent in front of the computer. Staring at your screen for too long will lead to a false sense of productivity because you’re busy but not getting anything done. When you focus on one thing for too long, you get “Code Blindness,” the programmer’s equivalent of writer’s block. It’s not certain if that would be a thing.
Whenever you’re coding and designing a responsive website, it is important to take a 5-minute break every hour and a half. Taking regular breaks, even if it’s simply staring out of the window at an empty sky for 5 minutes, helps your brain settle down and perform a pseudo-semi-reset on itself. Spend a few minutes clearing your mind and refocusing your attention. Try stretching your legs or drinking some water. Your problem-solving abilities will improve.
You may do the following to remind yourself that it’s time to take a break:
- The Pomodoro Method: By setting timers, you can manage your time and divide your goals. Consequently, your problem-solving skills have greatly improved. There is also an iOS app that you can use to track your progress with this strategy.
- Drink plenty of water: Keeping hydrated at work will help you stay fresh and prevent fatigue. Taking a walk is also a nice reason to do so.
Often the solution to a difficult situation will appear to you while you are doing something else. Take a break from your computer if you find yourself staring at it again. It will almost certainly be helpful to you!
Tip 6: Calculate Your Tasks
Work that is most important to you is a responsibility that will provide the most important results for you. The tasks you have on your plate are not all equally important, so don’t treat them that way.
“Prioritize your tasks and complete the most important ones first”
It’s as simple as that.
Secondly, you must have the discipline to schedule time to work on your most important tasks. The first thing you ought to do in the morning is to get started on it. Behavioural psychologists say we are at our most productive in the morning for a two-hour window.
Do not work on everyone else’s most important duties, such as returning their emails and phone calls during this time. Don’t respond to all of these emails and phone calls before completing your most important task.
Build a strong bond with your project manager; he or she isn’t your employer, and you’re all on the same team. Get them to identify the parts that are difficult to estimate, and then come up with smaller solutions that you can iterate on and that are easy to estimate.
The majority of R&D teams use Jira for project planning, team collaboration, and performance analysis. Many people are unaware, however, that Jira can be enhanced with apps and Chrome extensions. For example, actiTIME allows you to establish task estimations, compare them with monitored hours, and analyze your productivity in configurable reports.
Tip 7: Plan Before You Write Code
Stay focused by creating a plan before you start writing code. Because of this, you know exactly what you want to build and how you want to solve the problem. So you don’t lose track of your thoughts or add features that you think will be helpful in the future.
Double-check that you understand all of the prerequisites before beginning to code. To construct or fix something, you should know what you need to code.
Take time to pay attention to the tiniest details; they can have a huge impact on the solution you’re implementing.
Afterwards, you can start building a plan for the best and responsive web development coding, which you can do by breaking your problem or feature into smaller pieces.
Conduct the necessary research to get a better understanding of the issues you will face. If you are working on a small application, you can get away without planning. However, if you are working on a large application, such a lack of planning will have significant adverse effects.
It could be code, architecture, or some compiler magic, for instance – Document Your Code. It is crucial when you work in a group. The coworker who asks you for things that you’ve already explained to all of your coworkers except him will frequently ask you for things. Explaining it to everyone will eat up your time like a black hole. You don’t want to waste time explaining the same thing again and again, but you also want to be helpful and respected by your peers.
Tip 8: Reduce distractions
A developer’s productivity is affected by his or her surroundings. There are a few tactics you can use to reduce interruptions at work, even though it is nearly impossible to avoid them:
- Invest in a good set of headphones – It is a fact that music positively affects our brains. As well as reducing noise and keeping the developer-focused, it also improves a person’s mood.
- Remove unnecessary notifications – It is common for email alerts and notification badges to distract users. Because of this, you must take advantage of snoozing, especially when you work long hours.
- Locate your workplace – Concentration is strongly affected by your environment. For me, a static background is more appealing than a moving one.
- Take advantage of the flow state – It is common for everyone at work to have a purple patch: an hour or section when they feel most productive. The peak flow state is what it is called. It’s vital to save this for the most important tasks of the day since it doesn’t last all day. The best way to take advantage of this is to eat the frog first, which also prevents procrastination.
Through its Digital Wellbeing Experiments, Google has been experimenting with ways to enhance work-life balance and reduce distractions.
To increase your productivity, you should cut off your social media usage. Distraction from social media is a major problem. We tend to check it every 10 minutes to make sure we haven’t missed anything. Only to find that nothing of note happened.
Social media can quickly consume a lot of your time if you’re not careful. When you are sidetracked by social media, it takes time to regain your focus, and nothing gets accomplished in the meantime.
This could be the advice that boosts productivity the most depending on how you use social media. Despite its simplicity, this suggestion is a good one.
Tip 9: Proper Sleep
To reach their goals, many software engineers put in the extra effort while sleeping. Sleep deprivation is common among many software engineers. When you are working in software engineering, which involves a lot of mental energy, sleep deprivation can make you drowsy and decrease your productivity.
Additionally, a developer’s ability to work efficiently will be enhanced if they get enough sleep, as it contributes to increased attention, better decision-making, and enhanced memory.
There are a few strategies to help you get a decent night’s sleep, despite deadlines and electronics disrupting your sleep:
- Our body and mind can determine their natural clock through a regular sleep schedule, resulting in a deeper sleep.
- You should try a digital detox before going to bed if you have difficulty sleeping. By keeping electronic devices nearby, you will be more alert.
- You can multiply your productivity by ten by getting a head start on the next day before going to sleep. Additionally, it serves as a useful reminder for the sleep hour.
Smartphones now have a night-shift mode that removes the blue screen that causes drowsiness.
Tip 10: Take Care of Yourself & Learn from Others
Sleep enough, eat well, take care of your health, rest your head enough, live where you like, try new things, and make sure your other muscles, in addition to your brain, are working.
The best advice we can give is to never stop learning from the mistakes and successes of others. People who are new to the craft can avoid most of the mistakes that others have made and learned from. If developers have a lot of experience, they should examine their habits because some of them may no longer be useful.
Wrapping Up,
In the short term, don’t expect huge gains in productivity, so expect incremental gains over time. Become more productive by focusing only on one item at a time from this list. Productivity demands the right mindset above all else. With a coachable, growth-oriented mindset, you can identify opportunities others may overlook. As an individual and as an organization, productivity opens doors for you.
Productivity is not a one-time event for engineers; it’s a constant process. If you remain flexible and try out new productivity tactics, you can improve your productivity and stay on track with your projects. To successfully manage these difficulties, you may need to use more than one productivity method in your web development company. With the help of your team or on your own, you can employ a variety of approaches.
