Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash
Every developer's dream is to be highly effective and be highly productive in their work and avoid distractions at all costs.
It doesn’t always have to be a dream. There are ups and downs, don’t worry.
Me, myself as a developer and a content creator have struggled a lot and still fighting myself to improve my productivity to do more everyday. 🦾
⚠️ The worst thing I’ve done to myself to do more work is cutting of my sleep. Which brings serious mental and physical issues to your body.
As Gary Vee says, It’s not about how much you sleep, it’s all about what you do when you’re awake.
Is it hard to build productivity as a developer? It’s not. It’s just those simple things we do everyday that’s make a huge difference.
Everyone’s a human being and not being able to do the things you wanted to do doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Don’t hurt yourself, treat yourself for what you’ve accomplished for the day and get excited for what’s coming! 😃
Here’s a few things I’ve tried personally and have helped me increase my productivity significantly 📈
Planning your day ✍️
My favorite app for planning, journaling, writing and almost everything is Notion. If you haven’t tried it out , I would recommend you to try it out 💯. It could help you increase your productivity by a ton.
When it’s coming to planning my day, I break it down to two sections,
Top Priority To-Do’s (max. 3–4 tasks) — This list has the most important and time-consuming tasks for the day.
Other To-Do’s — Rest of all the To-do’s you have for the day.
This way it helps me focus on the most important tasks for the day and and then focus on all the other errands.
Screenshot of my Notion Page
Have Pen and Paper Handy 📓
This small stuff significantly helped change my workflow. As a developer and as a content creator myself, I have a lot of thing going throughout my day. Meetings, brainstorming ideas, writing, creating and a bunch of other stuff.
To keep track of what I do and also keep track of all the amazing ideas ✨ I get throughout the day, I always have a Pen, Paper (Notebook) and Post-it’s near my workspace and jot down everything I get into my head so I don’t miss anything important or valuable.
Having a Good Night Sleep 🌃
This is something I deeply stress a lot on, though I still have a weird ad hoc sleeping pattern.
When a person starts learning to become a developer, the first thing they learn before everything is, how to become a night owl 🦉. Fuck that shit! 🛑
The main reason I don’t encourage anyone to be a night owl is because, it could lead to stress, anxiety and most importantly burnout overtime. 😫
Having a good 8-hour sleep is necessary for a human body. You might feel like reducing your sleep hours it’s because you spend a lot of your time wasting on YouTube, Instagram or Netflix, etc. Turn that time you spend on social media towards your goals.
💭 Side Note: This does not mean, no entertainment. Restrict the amount the of hours your spend on it.
A programmer’s main responsibility is problem-solving and creativity, to be able to do that, you must have a good mind and body, for that, you need to have enough sleep 💤
Measure your time ⏰
Last but not least, measuring my time has helped me a lot in increasing my productivity.
There’s two ways you can do it, either your can go the Pomodoro Routé or the Deepwork Routé.
I personally prefer Deepwork — Spending 3–4 hours of undisturbed workflow.
If you want to go the Pomodoro Routé — You can use apps like Forest to track the # of Pomodoro’s you complete each day and you can push yourself to complete one extra everyday. 💥
If you want to go the Deepwork Routé (just like me) — You can use your stopwatch or an app(I haven’t checked out any…) and log time, take breaks every once in a while (try to reduce it to zero) and keep working for 3–4 hours of more.
That’s all folks 🎬
This is just me being myself and sharing my experience on how I tackle the problem of being unproductive at work, if you found value out of it, make sure leave some hearts.
If you’ve got any questions feel free to comment below!