A Guide to Developer Productivity: 5 Healthy Habits & Tools

On paper, software and web development is a structured, orderly process.

But developing IRL? It's mostly chaos:

Technical decisions, new stacks, social notifications, shoulder taps, calls, meetings, family duty, GIFs... SLACK!

try{
    Work();
}
catch(ChaosOverloadException ex){
    Logger.LogFatal("(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ ", ex);
    Tables.FlipAllOfThem();    
}

No wonder maintaining developer productivity is an everyday struggle.

Believe me, I know: it's a major pain point in our dev team's day-to-day.

So I decided to try and do write something about it.

Hopefully that something—let's get fancy and call it a "Guide to Developer Productivity"—will help us and other devs strive towards healthy productivity.

This post will cover 5 dev productivity habits with relevant tools for developers to help you follow each one.

There's money, energy and maybe tears to be saved in what follows.

Shall we?

5 developer productivity habits + useful tools

Quick links

• 1. Tailoring a strict schedule
• 2. Writing testable code
• 3. Eliminating distractions
• 4. Asking for help
• 5. Preserving mental health

Unproductive development time is costly to 1) yourself and 2) your clients.

Stack up too much of it and it might jeopardize self-esteem, motivation, professional relationships and your own money.

So, how to fix?

---

→ Read the full guide here