How To Be a Productive Software Engineer Even If Software Engineering Is Not Your Passion

You don’t have to love software engineering to be productive in it.

You really don’t.

Some people have a natural affinity for programming, while others, like me, simply do not.

I didn’t get into software engineering because I love software engineering.

I love the lifestyle and opportunities that being a software engineer allows me to create and afford.

You may ask yourself the following:

“So how do I handle the day-to-day activities doing something that I am not passionate about?”

“How do I still produce quality work and work as hard as those who are passionate about it?”

I’m glad you asked. Let me break this down for you.

Embrace The Power Of Coffee

Listen, I know coding isn’t your thing, but have you heard of caffeine?

You think every software engineer just wakes up out of bed 5 minutes before stand-up with raging passion?

Think again.

Passion is brewed daily and consumed in liquid form.

This magical substance has been proven to improve cognitive function, focus, attention, and alertness. So… if we’re talking about using large chunks of our precious brain power begrudgingly debugging the same feature for the third time this sprint…what better way to start your day than with a nice big strong cup of liquid passion.

Take A Freaking Break (seriously…get up)

Sitting there like a kid in timeout in front of your computer all day is no beuno. You have to find ways to break the monotony and the frustration between your development time and the barrage of pointless meetings on your calendar.

To stay productive, take regular breaks to get some fresh air, scream into a pillow or two, or get another cup of liquid passion before getting back to work.

This will help you avoid burnout, exercise your lung capacity, and continue to feel fresh and focused while you look up code snippets on stack overflow.

Find The Right Tools

Stop doing things that a computer can do for you.

Code completion tools, debugging tools, terminal add-ons, whatever you need… just find it. Anything that will help you speed up or spend less time doing what you don’t want to do, find it and use it.

Especially with the swarming popularity of AI, there are some really great AI tools that pretty much code for you.

I won’t list any by name (because they don’t pay me to…yet).

Developing extreme speed and efficiency will help you overpower your lack of passion for writing unit tests, refactoring legacy code, or any of the other daunting dev tasks in your backlog.

Save yourself a ton of time and make your life easier with tools that were built to do just that.

Don’t fight the game.

Break Down Those Big Tasks

When you’re frustrated and overwhelmed with a daunting coding task, sometimes you just want to throw that $200 ergonomic keyboard across the room and break it into pieces.

I understand the sentiment.

It would actually be better to break that task down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Then repeat again, until those tasks are even smaller.

Let’s be honest, we’re all for doing software engineering tasks that take minimal effort to complete.

If you mentally break down (all the time) each small individual chunk into small 1-point cards, you’ll be able to easily manage writing one function, adding one more endpoint to the API, or solving one more error.

It will help ease that initial reluctance and frustration you have when you get one of those larger and more complex cards.

Also, it feels good to cross off smaller tasks and build momentum.

Nothing wrong with a little sense of accomplishment and motivation to keep you and your keyboard alive.

Always Have Something To Look Forward To After Work.

As soon as you don’t have to code anymore for the day, STOP.

Go do something you’re passionate about to blow off steam and clear your brain from all the console.errors()

Purposely set aside time in your schedule, directly after work if you can, to go do something you love and enjoy.

Honestly, it is much more bearable doing work you’re not passionate about when you have something enjoyable to look forward to after.

I have personally found that this helps me get done with my tasks faster and drastically reduces how much time and energy I waste on complaining and procrastinating.

My mind is already on what I’m going to do after so I never get stuck infinitely looping through my present discomfort.

In conclusion, becoming a productive software engineer doesn’t require a deep passion for coding. By embracing caffeine, screaming into household cushions, having AI do as much of your job as possible for you, psychological manipulation, and always keeping a comforting light at end of your terminal every day, you can still be a productive and successful software engineer.