This kind of behavior had to be nipped in the bud. It took me a while to get "in the zone" for the new tasks that I had just started. Also, I realized that when I switch from one task to another, I lose focus. A lot of people mistake these two terms, and I was certainly one of them. First of all, what I was doing wasn't really multitasking, it was task-switching. I was a young and proud self-proclaimed multitasker myself until I realized that I was just deluding myself. I realized that this was happening due to the false notion that people can multitask. Yet another state I wanted to avoid is the state of being busy but not being productive. So, I limited my list-making routine to the very beginning of the workday. Then I found out that, according to a professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Timothy Pychyl, PhD., silly humans, after some period of time, start considering lists an achievement and allow themselves to feel like they've done something useful without taking on any real work. I noticed that sometimes, when my motivation is on the low end, I turn to making plans and lists just to avoid real work. Also, I could measure my progress, knowing exactly how much time I had spent, and avoid anxiety bursts.Īnother problem with making lists is that it's a form of procrastination. So, breaking down a big project into smaller parts helped reduce that feeling of intimidation, but it didn't help me with measuring my progress.Īlong came Agile methodology and taught me that every task should be as small as possible and that it should have a specific measurable goal (wait, doesn't that sound like Single Responsibility Principle?) That way I could create my lists in a more efficient way, thus creating tasks that would take a few hours to finish. Often, this would cause a feeling of unfulfillment, because I couldn't realize that I had finished two large tasks and that I should be satisfied with that. I could finish fifty small tasks or two big ones, and that, in terms of job quantity, meant nothing to me. One of the problems was that I just didn't know how big each task on the list was.
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However, once I started my career as a professional developer, I wanted to quantify how much I actually got done and how I can increase that quantity. Of course, in high school and during college, I had no problem with this system because I could finish everything on the list with no problem. That is why I adopted a practice of breaking down big tasks and creating lists of things that need to be done, and I have been doing this from a very early age. Most people are intimidated by the large amount of work and this is completely natural. Usually, when I get a large project that needs to be done, I get sort of intimidated. By this, I don't mean that you shouldn't work smart I just mean that you should be ready to do some heavy lifting in life in general. Also, you'll rip yourself apart from that mindset, promoted by countless self-help books, that you should work smart, not hard, meaning that you can enjoy the fruits of hard work without lifting a finger. You want to get to that place where you jump-start your internal drive. Without this, no productivity boosting method will help you. You should choose to be driven by that gut feeling that, hell or high water, will make you complete everything. There is no specific technique that can help you with the commitment per se it is just your choice. By this, I don't mean that you should make a commitment to your boss, or colleagues, or anyone else but yourself. You need to make a commitment that you will do the work, hard work. This is the root of every good performance out there.
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Perhaps there are software developers out there that will find these useful. Therefore, here are some of the techniques I've used as well as techniques I'm currently implementing in order to increase the amount of work that gets done. Some of the methods used in other professions can't be applied to this one.
Software development, on the other hand, is a very specific profession. There is a different method for every person out there that seems to increase that internal drive, which in turn gives a boost of productivity. In my opinion, there is no one solution for every person in the world. Countless articles, self-help books and general discussions have been written in an attempt to shed more light on the ways in which one's productivity can be increased.
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