Postcard {2} : Productivity and Focus!
All essential concepts to keep us, programmers focused and productive - with suggestion for supporting (free) tools.
We, programmers, start working on software development out of passion. We are lucky enough to take our passion as a profession! So, our life was expected to be - a dream came true! 😇
But we don’t see ourselves in that state very often. Instead, many of us are living a life full of stress and frustration! But how the dream became a nightmare?
Common causes of stress in a developer’s life include - overcommitment, procrastination, and failure of maintaining proper focus and productivity.
In this edition, we’ll discuss focus and productivity - one key source of stress. I am going to share some proven concepts, tips, and tools that will help to keep us focused and productive.
Let’s take back the happiness of living a life of passion! 💪🏼
📰 Articles
Here are 5 concepts related to productivity and time management - that you MUST be aware of. Then, you can decide (or design) your very own productivity system based on your need and situation.
The Pomodoro technique - bring rhythm and agility to your everyday work.
Time Blocking - a simple and essential time management skill.
The Eisenhower Matrix - the classic process of prioritising tasks by urgency and importance.
Additionally, the following articles share some useful practices that we, programmers can use to keep us productive and focused:
4 Unsexy One-Minute Habits That Save Me 30 Hours Every Week.
DO NOT do the mistakes that can kill your productivity.
8 Effective Tips to Increase Productivity as a Developer.
Actionable Tips For Developer Productivity.
🛠 Tools and techniques
Where is all my time going 😫! You’ll never know unless you track. Use a time-tracking tool like toggl, wakatime or rescuetime.
Organize information in a way that you can find them when needed. PARA Method may help.
Use tools like Notion, Evernote or keep to keep notes - make them accessible from anywhere, on any device.
If you plan to do something later, put it on a to-do list like ticktick or todoist. Otherwise, you may forget them at the right moment.
📢 News and Updates
A few updates on the interesting happenings around the programming and tech world.
In the middle of December 22, Google’s Passwordless Solution Arrives in Chrome.
Laravel 10 is coming on February 23. Have a look at what it’ll bring for you.
Google can now read your doctor’s bad handwriting.
🐦 Tweet of the week
This collection of repositories is a goldmine for developers! It includes free books, interview resources, awesomelists, app ideas, demo apps (with source code), free APIs, system-design guides… what else are you looking for!
🥳 Fun!
How does it feel when you’re trying to dive deeper into a complex issue and someone knocks just for nothing?
That’s all for this week. Next week, we’ll discuss another topic related to the programmers’ work and/or life.
Do you have any topic in mind? Please let me know in the inbox in the comment section.
Take care! 👋