/Productivity

You Can Automate More Than You Think

- Hillel Wayne tl;dr: "I don’t need to burn any of my limited focus on something menial anymore. It matters even more when automating something I don’t know by heart, like my Zoom URL or my EIN. Then it takes focus to find it ;and then copy it over."

featured in #308


Automating A Software Company With GitHub Actions

- Michael Matloka tl;dr: This post shows how a good CI solution can automate your engineering workflow and help you focus on actual challenges instead of chores. 

featured in #305


Shishir's To-Do List Philosophy

- Shishir Mehrotra tl;dr: (1) Co-founder and CEO at Coda's to-do list philosophy: (1) Start every new day fresh with no weight from the previous day's list of things to do, just a new sheet of paper with a new set of priorities, don't compound from the previous day. (2) Do the hardest task first. (3) Have a column with next action so you can see which tasks are missing a next step. (4) Know whether it's on your plate or someone else's. 

featured in #292


Optimizing Workspace For Productivity, Focus, & Creativity

- Juan Pablo Aranovich tl;dr: Advice around optimising workspace includes: (1) Screen should be at least to nose level. (2) Bringing your visual to a narrow space enhances focus. (3) Make sure that whatever you are looking at is straight in front of your eyes. (4) For every 45 minutes focused on something narrow, get 5 minutes of relaxation. And more. 

featured in #289


9 Multipliers For Boosting Your Team’s Productivity

- AbdulFattah Popoola tl;dr: The first 3 are: (1) Observability: covers the spectrum of logging, metrics, distributed tracing, telemetry, alerting, etc. (2) Estimate how long it takes your team to go through the CBTD (code-build-test-debug) loop and ask yourself what that numbers tell you. (3) Flaky tests erode trust and breed learned helplessness.

featured in #282


Find The Root Cause Of Your Productivity Problem With The "5 Whys" Technique

- Karine Bengualid tl;dr: "The 5 Whys technique was developed in the 1930s by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the automotive manufacturer Toyota Industries. The idea is simple: identify an issue and ask "why" 5 times, until you get to the root cause of your issue." Karine illustrates how you can tackle the root cause of productivity issues using this technique.

featured in #276


Box’s VP Engineering On Biohacks For A Better Career

- Tomas Barreto tl;dr: (1) "The greatest boost to productivity is ownership." If you feel like you've lost ownership over something, one sentence (or action) can make you feel like you have regained it. (2) Build your resilience through exercise, meditation and "subjecting yourself to extremes" e.g. cold showers. (3) Calibrate your energy using power poses and restful sleep.

featured in #272


Moving Faster

- Jamie Brandon tl;dr: The following allowed Jamie to program faster: (1) Caring and wanting to be faster. (2) Making decisions based on goals. (3) Focus in blocks of 2-3 hours i.e. no email, slack, twitter... (4) Batching tasks. (5) Make small changes for big tasks. (6) Shorten feedback loops. (7) Write stuff down. (8) Reduce frequent mistakes. (9) Make low-level skills automatic. (9) Reflect. Each is discussed with examples. 

featured in #270


4 Resources On Software Team Productivity Everyone Should Know

- Ari-Pekka Koponen tl;dr: Lessons from the top resources on engineering productivity. Including: (1) Project Aristotle: Understanding team effectiveness, (2) DORA: Four key performance metrics, (3) SPACE: A framework for developer productivity, and (4) two studies on the limitations of retrospectives. Easy-to-read summaries with practical advice on how to apply them.

featured in #264


Habits I've Developed for Fast + Efficient Programming

- Casey Primozic tl;dr: (1) Getting really good at using “go-to definition” in the editor. (2) Making extensive use of full-codebase search and learning the best things to grep for in order to navigate code quickly. (3) Writing descriptive and unique error messages that can be easily searched for, and more.

featured in #263