7 TIPS to Maximise Productivity [for Software Engineers]
From Reddit threads to Youtube shorts, distractions are everywhere. It has become a challenge to stay focused on a single task for an extended period. Here are a few tips and tricks that I found really helpful when I had difficulty focusing.
Find your Productive time
You might have noticed there’s a time in the day when you are super-focused, you will get into the flow (the zone) easily and get more things done in a short amount of time. For me, it's around 3:00–4:30 PM almost every day. Find that time. Schedule the high-priority tasks or harder tasks to work on, during that time.
Exercise and Meditate
As Software engineers, we are mostly stationary, sitting at a single place for hours looking down at a computer, this is not meant for our bodies to do. We must find a hobby that keeps us moving, that helps with posture and also good at helping with our Focus. After all better health = better focus!
I can say you from my experience of 5+ years of consistent weight training and over 130+ hours of meditating experience, I can confidently say that these two have changed the trajectory of my life. I used to have a very short attention span (ability to focus on a single task) prior to starting these hobbies. But now I am able to sit at a desk for hours to code/write on medium, apart from that, these hobbies have a great impact on their own on your physical and mental health.
If you are interested to learn more about the benefits of Exercise and how it improves your Brain health, Read this
One task at a time
Context switching and multi-tasking are probably killing your productivity, without you noticing it.
How many times were you been working on a task and suddenly an email notification hits, or a co-worker pings for help and you go and reply, only to realize a few hours later and come back to your work and forgot what were you working on, this has happened a lot, right ? Yeah, it happens to me all the time! I started enabling Focus time on my Phone and Computer and being completely isolated from all your distractions. Also, having a pair of noise cancelling ear plugs / noise cancelling earphones with ambience or music with no lyrics can help with your Focus by isolating you further.
More Reading — Why Humans Are Bad at Multitasking
Try to choose the tasks that you love to work on
It is always fun to work on something that you are good at, or something you are curious about, right ? For me it is working on AWS, Kubernetes and Python. So I always try to spend most of my time working on them. So find what you enjoy working on and find work related to that. Believe me, you will be very productive if you work on things you love!
“If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” — Marc Anthony
Take a quick nap
Getting a shut-eye in the afternoon for a short period of 10 — 20 mins will clear your mind and help you focus on your task better.
But be careful napping can kill your productivity if done wrong. Naps for longer durations can make you drowsy and make you crave a little more sleep. Be sure to keep your naps in the time range of 10–20 mins!
More reading — Napping: Health benefits and tips for your Best Nap
“The nap is a sort of easy version of meditation.” — Tom Hodgkinson
Use a Calendar
How many times have you missed an important meeting or missed a deadline ? Yeah, me too ;) . Always schedule your main events such as meetings, demos, deadlines in an online calendar. You can get started with free to use Google Calendar .
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” — David Allen.
Design, Plan and Implement
I used to be the guy that jumps directly into the implementation, I thought back then that is the fastest way to get things done. As you might have guessed, I was wrong! From experience and working with other professionals, I learnt this is not the optimal/effective way to get things done. These are the steps you need to get things done optimally. These steps also help you to save time in the future, because you would have avoided a lot of simple mistakes in your implementation.
“Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution” — Brian Tracy
- Design
This is the time where you have discussions with architects come-up with the High-level and and low-level designs of your system. - Plan
Plan your implementation before actually implementing. This is the time where you should think about implementation details and planning your code. - Implement
This is the time you should start writing actual code.
So, there you go friend, wish you find this article helpful :-) . Thanks for reading. Please comment your thoughts and if you have any tip or trick that you found helpful, comment it down as well. Clap and Share. Thanks again!
