Improving Programming Productivity

I recently read a very interesting artical written by Matthew More describing how to improve a programmers productivity. With so many distractions on the web it seems increasingly difficult to stay focused in this ever evolving environment. Countless times I’ve found myself sidetracked from doing the most straight forward task and im sure im not the only one. Be it stumble, google reader, facebook, or youtube, these are all day to day distractions which can effect your productivity, and accumulate to time wasted if your in a work environment. So here are my suggestions:

1 – Segment Your Day

Try to break your day down, give yourself a short timeout in the morning then again at lunch, let this be your time when you can disengage from your work and get your daily feeds update your status etc.

2 – IM Only When You Need To

One of the single biggest distractions in any form of workplace is instance messaging. The best rule of thumb is to EM(email) before you IM, Having 1 less distraction can make a world of difference espcecially when your in the middle of a problem and you completely loose your train of thought because someone needed to ask you a question they already new the answer to.

3 – Observe the 6 P’s

The best Lesson I ever learned about planning was the 6 P’s - Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. By planning something you are able to think it through and see issues as they arise. You can do this in a lot of different ways but you just cant beat the good old pen and paper.

4 – Know When To Stop

Web programming, like computer programming can be extremely addictive, as we all know, there is a fine line between work and addiction. working for 8-10 hours a day can take its toll, so its important that when your away from your projects ie on holiday or even a weekend break you leave your computer at your desk, more than just allowing you to switch off, it will keep your game up when you do return to your work.

5 – Organise Your Desktop

By keeping your tools accessable to you and having a clean environment in which to work you will find your productivity will increase ten fold. Be it your Dock or your programs, having better arrangement of your applications greatly improves your work effectivness overall because you only deal with the tools you need, having WOW running in the backgroud will not achieve the same turnover of workflow.

I hope these tips will help improve your work effectoveness and get more done in less time. If you have any tips and suggestions of your own, please feel free to discuss them.