As developers, we often look for the “big” optimizations — a new framework, a faster stack, or a clever library. But honestly, it’s the small hacks that save me the most time day-to-day.
Here are a few that I’ve found super useful:
Keep a Personal Snippet LibraryThat regex you wrote last month? The date formatter you spent 20 minutes debugging? Save them.I keep a simple repo of snippets (or even just a Notion page). It’s saved me countless hours of copy-paste and re-inventing.
Automate File TasksImage compression, favicon generation, file renaming… these things are tiny but add up.Instead of manually hunting tools each time, I’ve bookmarked a single hub with small dev utilities (I use justinbrowser.comfor things like image annotation, compression, favicon generator, etc.). It’s nice to have it all in one place.
Use the 50–10 Rule for Focus50 minutes of focused work → 10 minutes of break. It keeps me from burning out and helps me get into a rhythm. Pomodoro works too, but this slightly longer interval feels more natural for coding.
Version Control Everything even side projects. You will thank yourself later when you can roll back “that one experimental commit at 3AM.”
Don’t Over-Engineer Side Projects It’s tempting to structure everything perfectly. But I’ve learned to ship small, get feedback, and only then add complexity.
✨ That’s it. Nothing groundbreaking — just the little things that compound over time.
👉 What’s your favorite tiny hack that saves you time as a developer?
Top comments (7)
bang on point, these small things have saved me ton of time over the years.
(not to be critical but the numbering in numbered list isnt correct)
One thing that helps me most in terms of saving time is maintaining a log of todo comments in code as to what is done or a notion page so I can comeback to it instantly. This helps with both the anxiety to leave something midway when you are in "flow state" & also coming back to it later after say having your lunch
Glad you found it useful. And also thanks for pointing out the issue, I have just fixed it. Thanks again 😊
Thank you for sharing this article.
I found it really helpful and practical.
I'll definitely try out these hacks and come up with some of my own as well.
Awesome! I am happy you liked it.
Good post!
cool!
Cool project, thanks