The following top productivity tips will greatly help you to get things done more quickly and effectively. Many of the points of this article are underestimated by software developers, however, by applying the following actions you will notice a significant increase in your productivity.
Without further ado, let’s see what are those tips and actions we can take to be more productive!
Master Typing Skills
Every software developer will be typing very often, therefore it is a highly valuable and important skill to improve. I still see software developers looking at the keyboard to type. It even seems harmless to not have typing skills but if we multiply all the time and effort we could have saved, for sure the numbers will be high. Why not improve typing skills then? We even become better programmers by typing faster.
A great website I used to improve my typing skills is the following one, it’s fun and free!
https://www.typingclub.com/
Master IDE Shortcuts
Clicking on options in IDEs might be very unproductive and it may even damage our focus level to solve a programming problem. It’s far more effective to know the shortcuts by heart and be able to code in a very smooth, faster, and more effective way. One technique I used to really internalize the IDE shortcuts is to avoid clicking on the option I want and instead, use the shortcut. It’s better to invest some time making a quick search on Google about the shortcut than clicking on the option and that’s because when we click on the option, it might become comfortable but also time-wasting.
Write Flexible Code
To write code to work is a big mistake, developers sometimes don’t care or even feel proud because they created the code quickly. It’s all flowers and roses but then developers usually forget that we spend around 10x more reading code than writing it. This mistake is repeated over and over again, and creating illusory numbers is always very tempting.
It’s very hard to maintain code that is badly written, bugs are easily created in complex and confusing code, some times it’s easier to throw the whole code away and build it again.
Automate Your Tasks
When you do something that has to be done over and over again, it’s a good idea to create a document specifying the actions so someone else can follow the steps you documented without having to ask you for guidance. A great example of it is the README file of a project, it’s very handy to specify the build and deploy steps for example.
If the task is not related to the project, you can also write a documentation page, nowadays a very popular tool is Confluence which enables us to easily organize useful content and share it with everyone else in an organization. Another great example of automation is CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) pipelines that automate the process of build, testing, and deploying.
Master Your Main Programming Language
By knowing your main programming language very well you will be able to develop powerful and flexible code. By not knowing it, developers would very probably reinvent the wheel many times. Investing in the learning of the Java language for example is a safe move because Java is by far the most used language in the world, has constant updates, is reliable, mature, robust, and has many powerful frameworks such as Spring and Quarkus.
One way to go deeper into the Java language is by trying out the Java Challenges, having courses, or reading books to go deeper into it. You can check out some top powerful Java books here!
Clean Your Work Environment
A messy desk drains your mental energy to do optimal work, this is scientifically proven. Therefore, why not organize and clean the work desk? We would usually take less than 10 minutes to clean the desk so it’s totally worth it to invest 10 minutes to gain focus, productivity, and well-being.
But the physical desk is not the only villain, what about your computer work environment? Organizing your files is a task that will boost your productivity because by doing that you will easily find whatever you need quickly.
Tabs are at the same time handy but can be also chaotic. It’s very usual for software developers to be overwhelmed with more than 20 tabs, the focus is easily lost and the worst part is that it becomes impossible to find anything on the massive amount of tabs. One simple action we can take to avoid too many tabs is to close them often, we can select a couple of important tabs and use the option ‘Close tabs on the right.
Use Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Sometimes at the workplace, it will be really noisy and difficult to concentrate. A great tool to help you to focus on your task is a noise-canceling headphone, you can elevate your concentration level to solve complex problems, and you can dramatically improve your productivity when you have a strong focus.
If you are not sure of which one to take and you value quality, I use the following Beats headphone, you can check it out:
Bose is also a good option:
Just be careful to use those headphones while doing exercises because the plastic holder might break.
Songs that have lyrics might take a bit of your focus power, it’s better to listen to instrumental songs. If you want to take it to a whole new level you can listen to classical music since it’s proved scientifically that it boosts your intelligence because of the melody sound. Different people might have different reactions though, so it might be fine for you to hear songs with lyrics as well, you can try different approaches and see what works best for you.
Communicate Effectively
You don’t need to be excessively communicating, you just need to make your message clear to others, also, to understand the message that it’s being said to you. Communication is not only on your side but you have to receive messages from others as well. Warren Buffet says that communication is the most important skill to be mastered and it really makes sense since we use it every day all the time. Therefore, why not invest in that skill?
By delivering your message effectively you can avoid many bad decisions that might be made by exposing your ideas. You will save a lot of time when you have to explain something, write an email, or explain your pull request, and you will also be heard more easily. If you, for example, have an idea that will improve the productivity of many developers, you will be able to communicate this idea and hopefully implement your idea. Then you will be multiplying productivity by the number of developers you are impacting, it might be 10, 100, 1000, 10000, who knows.
Communication has incredible power, I usually see many developers making an idea that should be simple, and super complex, to be an excellent communicator we should do the opposite, we should make the complex simple instead. Remember, make your message impactful.
Organize Your Tasks
If developers don’t know what you need to get done, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed because what tends to happen is that developers will try to do everything without any focus. It’s crucial to know where you are heading, organizing tasks is a great way to be productive.
Simple tools such as Trello help us to track down some tasks, a physical whiteboard is also very handy because we can easily see what tasks we planned to do. By organizing our tasks and getting them done we also get an endorphins hormone boost which keeps us more motivated and more energized to get more things done.
You can even use a notebook and write what are your goals for the next day, this is very good practice because deciding what to do will take some of your willpower and if you plan what to do beforehand, it will be easier to get what you decided to do done.
Learn Fundamentals
Learning new technologies is part of our job as software developers and one thing that makes this process far easier is if we learn fundamental concepts. For example, learning the basics of networks helps a lot when learning cloud technology. Also, before learning about container technologies such as Docker, it’s very useful to learn the Linux OS. To learn programming language, we can learn far easily any language if we know algorithms.
Therefore, we don’t need to learn lots of tools or frameworks because if we focus on the fundamentals things will make sense far more quickly and mastery will also come more easily. Software developers can always choose a framework or tool to master but just they should be careful to not try to embrace the world because if developers do that they will feel overwhelmed which will usually lead to procrastination.
That’s it for this article and don’t forget to be constantly breaking your limits!
