Boost Your Productivity in 3 Easy Steps

We’ve all had tight deadlines to meet and no seemingly feasible way to meet them. I often talk about writing code, but today I wanted to talk about making the most of your time. I see this as a crucial step in the journey to level up as a software engineer. After all, if we spend all our time and effort moving in the wrong direction how can we expect to get where we want to go?

Tip 1: The Pomodoro Technique

This is a unique time management technique developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. You break work into set time intervals, typically 25 minutes. You set a kitchen timer for your allotted time and focus solely on a single task for the full 25 minutes. After the timer goes off, you take a 10-minute break before starting again. Each work interval is called a Pomodoro (or tomato in Italian, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Francesco used).

If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. There is something beautiful about simplicity, and I think we, as software developers, can appreciate a little elegant simplicity. If you’ve never used this technique before, it is very effective. It gets you to focus on one single task for an allotted period of time before switching to a different task. During your Pomodoro (work interval), you should aim to reduce distractions and focus only on what you’re doing.

If you’re wondering what happens if you finish your task before the end of the Pomodoro, the answer is simple. Francesco says that the remaining time can be used to review your work, make notes, and tweak what you’ve done.

One of the things I do is build in reflection time to the Pomodoro. So a typical Pomodoro is 25 minutes long, then a 10-minute break. What you can do is say you’ll do a 25-minute Pomodoro, a 10-minute reflection, followed by a 10-minute break. I find that when I give myself time for reflection on work I’ve just done, I catch bugs or errors that I might have otherwise missed. Having some built-in time for reflection is one of the best tweaks you can make to this method.

I don’t like super strict processes; I enjoy a little flexibility. So I would highly encourage you to play around with this technique to figure out what works best for you.

Tip 2: Leverage Automation

Automation is one of your most powerful tools. In today’s day and age, numerous tools can automate specific tasks for us. One really incredible tool that I typically use is GitHub Copilot. I can use it straight in my IDE and get it to take away many repetitive, tedious tasks. Copilot can do in seconds what would take me minutes. If you utilize it enough, those minutes can add up to hours. Bear in mind that GitHub Copilot is only one example. I would also encourage you to script your own tools as well. Sometimes we can’t find the perfect tool to tackle a task. That would be an issue, except we’re software engineers; we solve problems for a living. Let’s face it; software engineering spans most industries. Personally, I’ve worked in the staffing industry, light industrial automation (mostly automation of large factory equipment), insurance, and building automation. Each industry and each company within that industry will have a different set of problems to solve. This is why scripting your own tools can save you a lot of time and money. For one thing, with such a vast array of problems to solve it’s nearly impossible to come up with off-the-shelf solutions to them. For another, if there is, it’s probably going to cost you. This is where we shine. This is where we say “screw it, I’ll do it myself”.

Last Tip: List and Prioritize Tasks

This might seem like a simple tip, but it’s one I think is one of the most helpful. I’m not sure about you, but I often get a bunch of things thrown at me in a day. When that happens, it can be really difficult to tackle tasks in a logical order. This is where my final tip comes into play. This is also one of the most difficult to execute. This is because when you’re getting things put on your plate, there’s often a sense of urgency to get things done. When we get that sense of urgency, it can be easy to want to start knocking things out as they come in. My advice to you would be to slow down a bit. There is always an obvious priority to things that become apparent to us when we look at all the work we need to do. Then we can put these things in a logical order and tackle them in the best way possible. For something so simple, it can be deceptively difficult to do when you’re staring down a deadline.