Four Ingredients of Productivity
Are you a productive software engineer?
The life of a software engineer is increasingly interrupt-driven. New languages and technologies are constantly being introduced. Architectures are more complex than ever. In such a challenging world, how do you stay productive and make an impact? HBR did research and discovered some patterns. In this article I will discuss them and introduce my own summary consisting of four dimensions, captured in one simple acronym: FREE.
1. Focus
Focus is all about working on the things that matter. How you do that? Start your day with a plan. Prioritize your tasks by priority/urgency. To help you decide on which task is most important, make sure you know your project’s objectives and key results.
Meetings are a special activity where you can add focus. For each meeting your attend ensure it has a published agenda and define your personal objectives for each meeting. Capture and follow up on action items from your meetings. For each meeting ask yourself: Do I really need to be here or can I spend my time better at something else? The best meeting is the one you are not in.
2. Result-Driven
For large tasks, arrive at conclusions as soon as you can. Treat your life as an agile project and work in small sprints, not large waterfalls. Make small steps and celebrate each small step forward. Demos are great for this purpose. But, standup and status meetings are also a great place to tell everyone how much progress you made already. Celebrate yourself and congratulate others who do the same.
Before reading anything, ask yourself why are you reading this material. What are your goals and what do you want to get out of this doc or slide deck? Are you trying to learn a general topic or are you searching for a specific answer to a question you have?
Before writing any text, first create an outline and then fill it in. Using a template will reduce the number of micro-decisions you need to make. Having structure around your writing will make the text actually write…
