Productivity Hacks

Hey Guys 👋🏽,

Hope everyone is OK. When learning (reading a lot) i've found myself getting distracted easily so today I thought to try the Pomodoro technique and i'm happy to say I saw some great results!

It got me thinking, what other hacks work you guys?

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Comments

[ADS-BNE]

Alongside the Pomodoro technique I make sure I actively get up from my desk and go for a little walk around the office and try to have a quick chat to the other devs (provided they are not in the middle of something, obviously). Just doing a quick lap of the office helps clear my head.

[Waqar Mohammad]

cool, thanks thats my next goal, step away rather than play with my phone 😃

[Jorge Alvarez]

To me the biggest productivity technique is: remote working.

• Commuting is terrible. Wasted time at the start and the end of day.
• It doesn't matter if you are in the zone you need to stop working to catch your train or your bus back home.

And the biggest productivity killer is Slack

I don't like distractions (that's another good reason for working from home) and Slack is demanding your attention constantly. I prefer to communicate in asynchronous ways like the email. I can close my email app and answer all emails later on. You can't do that with Slack where everybody expect you to answer immediately.

[Waqar Mohammad]

Some great points raised Jorge. Totally agree with the Slack! I’ve learnt to switch off distractions now, still a little improvement required though

[derek]

DISCLAIMER, not making a truth claim or anything of that nature. Just sharing personal workflows that work for me...

For productivity (macOS):

• trackpad++ - jitouch.com/
• zsh - github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh
• tmux + nvim
• remap capslock to control
• alfred 3 - alfredapp.com/
• slack - github.com/erroneousboat/slack-term
• documentation - kapeli.com/dash or devdocs.io/
• 🐳all the things - docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/
• vim bindings in chrome - chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/... , chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...
• chrome snippets - github.com/derekahn/chrome-snippets

For attentiveness:

• ☕
• 🏃(exercise)
• comfortable clothes
• good chair
• Personally, I get distracted surrounded by a lot of people talking or walking around (open office spaces, cafes, weworks, etc)-- If I can find a quiet phone room or even in a car, or someplace quiet and isolated(ish) I can usually get a lot more done versus being surrounded by a lot of peoples.

[Waqar Mohammad]

thanks for a great list Derek. I use alfred and the ☕ already, will try some of the other stuff.

[derek]

welcome 🤙🏽!

Cool, yeah Alfred3 is awesome! If you haven't wired up some workflows yet github.com/zenorocha/alfred-workflows are plug and play. There's also a workflow to integrate kapeli.com/dash.

Oh and if you haven't already set up Alfred3's clipboard history management, you might want to look into that as well. For all things copy 🍝.

[Waqar Mohammad]

😮 mind blown right now. Had no idea Alfred could do all that. Thank you

[John Munro]

If a task takes less than 5 minutes do it straight away.

Keep a log of work done each day and a separate list of jobs to do ordered by priority.

select which tasks you want to accomplish each day, if you are implemeting a new feature ensure it is broken down to stories and tasks which are no more than 4 hours at most.

headphone are essential to remove background conversations in an open plan office.

always look to improve the workflow and clean code as you go

[Waqar Mohammad]

Thanks John. I love the < 5 mins idea. Started applying it today :)

[Lynne Finnigan]

Sometimes music helps me stay focused. I do have some days where I'm more distracted than others though! Interested in giving the pomodoro technique another go.

[Waqar Mohammad]

Hey Lynne,

Thanks for getting back! Yes I think music helps too, but I read a lot of docs lol so sometimes it gets a little noisy too. Yes I would definitely say give pomodoro another try. I'm on day two and i feel so much more productive 😃

[Lynne Finnigan]

Ah yeah, I agree it can be more distracting when reading! For coding, sometimes I'll choose music that has no lyrics, like film soundtracks or dance or something. I'll give the pomodoro technique a try today :) do you use a specific app or anything for it?

[Waqar Mohammad]

Thanks, I have thought about music-only tracks before - will give it a try. Yes, i have been using this extension. Its open source and does the trick. Do let us know how you get on.

[WillDeStijl]

musicforprogramming.net
Also, your link to the chrome extension was broken. Seemingly did to the registered trademark character, here:
chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/....
Thanks for that suggestion. I'd been using tomtato-timer.com

[Waqar Mohammad]

thanks buddy will try it out!

[Ali Spittel]

I'm really big on batching work. It's where you do similar tasks all at once and hyper-focus on those tasks before moving on to another one. I also will shut off notifications on everything when I need to do deep work.

I also like going into work super early in order to work on personal stuff so that I don't hit traffic on the way in. (My commute goes from 20 mins to 1.5 hrs if I leave late). I also stay late for the same reason.

As far as apps go, I love Google Inbox (RIP), TweetDeck, TicTic for todos, and text expander for responding to similar messages. In addition, I don't really do phone notifications other than text/call.

[Waqar Mohammad]

😃 Ali, you are a constant source of inspiration so thank you. Only today I took some of your mac set up tips and tricks - very cool.

Got to check this list now too. Yes bummer about inbox ☹️ There was a cool alternative but the were acquired.

[TK]

Music + remove distractions. Simple things as silent notifications, remove too many chrome tabs (twitter and medium are my main distractions), use headphones (colleagues tend to not interrupt my focus).

[Waqar Mohammad]

cool, thanks. Distractions is a big one for me too. I have learnt to avoid them but can improve

[Yves Junqueira]

Everyone is different, so what works for me may or may not work for you. But since I started working on my current project I've been experimenting with a new way of increasing productivity by being conscious of flow state and its conditions and it's working quite well for me.

• Optimize for being in flow state as often as possible and for as long as possible. I aim for at least two long periods per day (morning, afternoon). It doesn't always work, but it's a good goal. Making it happen isn't easy, here's how I made it work for me:
  • plan coding tasks ahead of time so you can spend a long time just cranking code.
  • use technologies that you're already familiar with, or that have good documentation so it's easy to learn without major interruptions
  • get fast feedback: invest on good tests and avoid slow builds. Don't tolerate flaky tests!
  • avoid meetings like the plague! In my experience, a meeting will basically disrupt a whole period of work (say, a meeting at 10am will destroy my productivity from 8am to 12am!)
  • find a distraction-free work environment. I like to work from home when kids aren't around, or from a coffee shop or a public library. Some level of background noise actually helps concentration. Same for music.
• Use a desktop app to track your productivity, how much time you spent doing work or slacking off. Having a report of how much "productive" time I spent on a week works great for my own personal accountability. I use timingapp.com but I'm sure there are others.
• Make it harder to keep bad habits:
  • Remove social apps from mobile phone
  • Block twitter.com, etc on the laptop's /etc/hosts.

Things that don't work for me:

• I don't use pomodoro techniques, personally. It goes against the goal of being in flow for a long time. I like to work with full-concentration, in the zone, uninterrupted for long hours and just forget about the world around me.
• our team avoids slack, telegram. We have an arrangement to avoid distracting each other (because it interrupts the flow), so we prefer asynchronous forms of communication (e.g: Trello).

I hope this list is useful for someone out there!

[Waqar Mohammad]

WOW, thank you Yves, for such great detail and introducing some alternative concepts. Things that I can try in the coming weeks.