Being a productive coder

Here is my take on productivity. Productivity is something everyone can achieve, even the laziest of people out there. Productivity is not a mind-set or some magical inner state you need to reach. Productivity is the act of doing actions.

You can be productive by doing a simple task such as making your bed in the morning. I like to call these actions push notifications. Making your bed in the morning is a mini achievement and can give you the necessary productive push you were looking for. You are giving yourself a push notification to “push” on. Constantly doing little tasks and achieving them is a self-rewarding process that further inspires more productivity. The more you are on the lookout to complete little challenges the more you will be productive.

Transfer this mind-set over to bigger more time consuming tasks. Just do it. Don't fool yourself. If you tell yourself that you will not go to bed before you have done a certain task, that mind-set will get you far really quickly. You will see results within days.

So, general approach:

1. Give yourself push notifications regularly throughout the day.
2. Don't do things half-assed. Give it your all, all the time. No excuses.
3. Every excuse you have is a cheap excuse. If everything becomes a cheap excuse you won't have the need to make excuses and you'll actually do things.

How does this relate to coding? If you can be productive at life you can be productive at coding!