My Productivity Playbook as a Developer
Simple effective tips to overcome procrastination & be productive (backed by scientific research)
Hello humans!
I’ve rediscovered the power of a routine over the last few months after working from an office again with actual real-life humans (can you believe it!?!). So continuing the theme of reflection and planning from my last 2 posts, I’d like to share some productivity tips to enable you to achieve all you wish to be this year.
I have always felt like a serial procrastinator who becomes a workhorse but only once I get started. So I decided to research some routines that would help get me to a place of “get shit done” quicker. This is how I discovered Eric Partaker, an entrepreneur, author, and CEO coach (winner of “CEO of the Year” 2019 at the Business Excellence Forum). I strongly identified with his approach to optimizing productivity when coaching and the simple yet scientifically backed methods he spoke of. In issue #8 of Waves & Code, I’d like to deviate a little from the weekly format to share some tools that I hope become the productivity mantras that help me beat the procrastination demon within.
Proactive Productivity Playbook 📕
Let’s jump into some hacks on how to beat procrastination by taking active steps to enable us “getting started” and into a flow state. Remember that it’s important to action one change (or maybe two max) at a time to efficiently execute and develop a habit - we will see this further along in this post (see single-tasking).
The learning outcomes of this week’s issue:
3 Productivity Routines
3 Productivity Tools
How to build resilience into your Productivity Framework
3 Productivity Routines 📋
1. Digital Sunset
Get off electronic devices at least 1 hour before bed. I’m sure this is not the first time any of us has heard this one and it’s with good reason. The constant stream of light from digital devices entering your eyes at night tells your brain not to secrete melatonin yet. This is a key hormone in our sleep-wake cycles. A disruption in our sleep leads to less than 8 hours of sleep which dramatically affects our productivity. Don’t just take my word for it, more details on this can be found in Why We Sleep by Neuroscientist Matthew Walker and on the Huberman Lab Podcast by neuroscientist Andrew Huberman.
My thoughts: After some research into this topic, it’s honestly scary what less than 8 hours of sleep a night does to our body and our brain. A lack of sleep is one of my biggest problems and there has been research linking lack of sleep to lower motivation due to lower levels of dopamine.1
Verdict: Implement ✅
2. Creative Before Reactive
Block off the first hour of your day to work on your #1 priority. This allows you to start your day with a sense of purpose and direction instead of replying to prompts from external sources(emails, Slack, etc). The latter can result in you being bounced from one person’s agenda to the next. The entire day falls into a feeling of catching up rather than feeling you accomplished a task. Rather protect the first hour of your day and focus on your outputs before taking in others’ inputs - start your day creative before reacting to requests from others. This way you will avoid getting to the end of the day feeling like you achieved none of the tasks you set out to do.
My thoughts: Meeting heavy days filled with retrospective and sprint grooming/planning can often swallow an entire day leaving me feeling like I’ve achieved nothing that day. Blocking out an early focus hour at the start of the day seems like a quick win to combat that feeling.
Verdict: Implement ✅
3. The 3S Rule
Schedule
Show-up
Single-task2 → only work on what was scheduled! (No browsing memes or Youtube)
Show yourself the same respect you show others in your life & career. When it comes to friends and colleagues, you attend scheduled meetings on time; show up for appointments without walking out halfway, and are fully present. So why not do the same when it comes to yourself? “Three S” the things you need to get done in life: you schedule, you show-up and you single task because “I respect myself, my own development, and the things that I want to achieve as much as I respect someone else”.
My thoughts: I am terrible at respecting my time and have often canceled my own scheduled appointments. This leads to backlogged personal tasks and stagnation - this needs to change. On another note, I found the power of single-tasking through agile development in software but I could be better at practicing this in my daily life.
Verdict: Implement ✅
3 Productivity Tools ⚒️
1. Input Tracking
Once you have set clear goals for yourself, look at what are the 20% of things you could do to achieve 80% of the output you want. A loose example here would be if you wanted to write a book, writing maybe 2 hours per day would contribute to this goal of finishing your book. You could then create a scoreboard for this metric to keep track of your high-leverage activity.
My thoughts: I believe tracking habits and input tracking to be quite closely related. At the moment I’m using Loop Habit Tracker as my personal scoreboard for habits I want to develop this year.
Verdict: Doing 👍
2. The Ideal Week
Design a week that maximizes your productivity. Structure your workday to have like activities grouped. For example, put creative activities together and reactive activities together to maximize your productivity. You’ll notice this uses both principles of “creative before reactive” and “single-tasking”.
Below is an example of what “your ideal week” can look like. It does not have to be adhered to strictly but it can be a guide used to stick to single-tasking and keeping your days “creative driven”.
My thoughts: I like the idea of exploring this tool loosely but not at the level of scheduling this in my calendar. I have done something similar to this before and the alerts created more noise than I would like.
Verdict: Skip for now ❌
3. Win the Procrastination Battle in your Head
Shift self-talk from obligation to anticipation. Often when we procrastinate, we use words like “I have to”/ “I must” - this language is heavy. It causes psychological effects that lead to feelings of oppression → avoidance → procrastination (according to The Now Habit by psychologist Neil Fiore). Changing our language to “When can I start?”/ “I want to”/ “I choose to” subtly switches our mental state to excitement and focus. Optimizing your environment and minimizing temptation is an important piece of this step too.
My thoughts: This was a biggie for me. I realized most of my procrastination is due to avoidance. I fall into a flow state easily once I get started with my task but overcoming the “avoidance” is my big problem. I need to focus on starting and everything else will fall into place.
Verdict: Implement ✅
Antifragility 💪
This is perhaps the most important part of a productivity system—the ability to recover from relapses or failures and come back stronger. Let’s face it, life is unpredictable and things rarely go to plan. Sometimes, our productive intentions might be disrupted and we should have tools that help in processing stress and responding in a healthy way.
1. The Physiological Sigh
This is a breathing pattern consisting of two deep inhales through the nose followed by a slow extended exhale through the mouth. It’s commonly observed in dogs and those that are sobbing. This causes a rapid offload of carbon dioxide and has been found to bring down your levels of stress.3
My thoughts: I know this sounds like some nonsensical thing but there’s actual scientific evidence (I promise). Also just try it for yourself, you might be surprised…like I was.
Verdict: Implement ✅
2. The Power of the Pause
When something happens that triggers you, pause before responding. Create space between the “stimulus” and your “response”. When something bad or unfavorable happens, we tend to react immediately sometimes even writing off the entire day. This doesn’t allow for our best selves in situations and can also cloud our judgment going forward. A great practice is to pause allow some time to pass and then ask “How would the best version of me react/respond to this?”. This will train a new habitual neural response pattern and you will start responding better to stress which will make you more productive as time goes by.
My thoughts: I’ve learned this behavior through experience in the workplace, especially with external stakeholders outside the tech team.
Verdict: Doing 👍
3. WOOP: Anticipating Failure / Mitigation Risk
Wish - Outcome - Obstacle - Plan
A framework to anticipate failure and mitigate risk. This allows us to set expectations and plan by brainstorming the possible obstacles we may face along the road to fulfilling our wish. WOOP is based on 20 years of scientific research. You can read more at https://woopmylife.org/.
My thoughts: I am quite an analytical person who has always been an optimistic realist. As a result, this has always been how I have approached most things in my life (including starting this newsletter).
Verdict: Doing 👍
4. Summoning “Your Most Courageous Self”
When facing something that truly scares you (which would lead to avoidance & procrastination), use a technique of positive visualization to picture “your most courageous self”. This can be described as the version of yourself that can truly achieve anything you want, the version of you that runs towards challenges and is excited by them. The version of you that knows your growth does not lie within your comfort zone. “Interview” this person and ask what action can I take this week to make progress against the thing that scares me. This shall create resilience within yourself by taking active steps to combat fears that obstruct your productivity.
My thoughts: I can see how this works in theory and have seen some scientific papers on the effects of positive thinking and visualization. However, adopting a persona to tackle things that scare me works better for me in my experience.
Verdict: Skip for now ❌
5. Play the Rebound Game
At some point, you may miss your target of work done against your goal. Be kind to yourself, this is life and this happens. At the same time, we know consistency is key to building habits and cultivating discipline within oneself. This is where we employ the rebound game and never commit productivity suicide by allowing ourselves to miss two times in a row. When life happens, don’t pity yourself and feel bad about it - instead pick yourself up, and use all the tools that you have to take on a new day with fresh motivation.
My thoughts: I generally give myself a really hard time when I feel like I have an unproductive day which leads to avoidance and procrastination. This behaviour, allows me to be kinder to myself whilst motivating me even more to get things done tomorrow. This has the additional benefit of keeping me accountable and not slipping too much.
Verdict: Implement ✅
That ends this week’s issue of Waves & Code. We will return to our normal article format in next week’s issue. Do let me know if you have any thoughts or opinions on the format change, as always - I’d love to hear from you!
Catch you on the next wave! 🤙