Programming and Productivity

Lately I’ve been feeling really productive when I’ve been coding. I’ve been thinking about why this is, and I’ve reached the conclusion its because of certain practices I’ve been slowly adopting over the last few months.

About two months ago I started reading David Allen’s "Getting Things Done". In the book, Allen presents a total plan for taking back your life (by being more productive and less stressed). One of the points he makes is that he found it is best for his clients to completely adopt his strategy at once. While his approach is great, adopting all of it for all aspects of my life seemed like a huge undertaking. And if there is one thing I have learned, tackling something huge in one step is a surefire way to fail. It is better to break it up into smaller elements and work on those.

Now this is just my two cents worth. From reading other sites, it seems like the GTD system works differently for everyone. I thought I would present my methods that have lead me to feel more productive while coding. Your mileage may vary.

• Write it down

I have found that writing things down on paper (specifically a small notebook) has help me tremendously. The notebook is small enough that I can take it pretty much everywhere and capture the important things quickly. By vitrue of writing something down, you are having to think about what you are writing about. I have found this helps me to better define my projects (like making the features set)

• Make a small list

In the notebook I try to keep my todo lists limited to 2 at most 3 topics. Basically I pick the 2 or 3 most important issues I’m thinking about and then make my todo list out of the tasks necessary to handle those issues.

• Small tasks, big results

By taking each issue and breaking it into a series of small tasks, I’m able to clearly see what needs to get done. That is priceless. Sometimes when you try to approach a problem at too high of a level, you miss out on the small details. Also, when you are dealing with smaller quantities completing each one feels like a major step forward. And in a way it is, your progress is now more measurable ("I got 5 things done today!" instead of "I’m still working on it…").

• Follow through on the tasks

Its important to finish what you start. But if for some reason you aren’t able to finish a task on your todo list (you ran into a bug you couldn’t figure out, you need a reference manual from the bookstore, etc.), it is important to make sure the task is migrated to a new todo list. Don’t leave it behind!

Tags: Programming, Productivity, GTD