9 Tips to Stay Productive While Coding from A Central Coast Web Developer

Coding can be taxing on a web developer’s mind, especially if you’re a beginner and trying to stay ahead of your workload. It requires significant levels of concentration which can be highly annoying since we live in a world full of distractions. However, with the right tips, boosting productivity during web development without compromising your work-life balance is possible.

So, here are some tips and tricks from the experts at The Website Guy.

9 Productivity Tips from Central Coast Web Development Experts

If you want to be a good programmer, you need to be efficient. And you need to be fast. Because the faster you work, the better your chances getting ahead of the competition. So, here are a few things you can do:

1. Know Your Time to Code

As a central coast web developer, we know the challenges of working from home, especially if living with family. Setting some strict boundaries can help minimise those distractions. You can also schedule daily tasks to measure your progress and ensure you’re on track to meet your deadline.

Since programming can be mentally taxing, choosing your peak performance time to code is important because you want to remain alert and focused. Besides, the average time for someone to stay productive is between twenty to forty-five minutes. Some people function better at night when there are fewer distractions.

2. Work Fewer Hours as a Web Developer

We know it sounds counterintuitive, but working fewer hours can increase efficiency. Some coders work well into the night, get up early to go to the office, and work 40 hours a week. As such, their lives revolve around programming and they hardly have the energy to enjoy other things.

When working on a central coast web development, we find ourselves more focused if we have time constraints. The idea of being able to go home at a reasonable hour, or hang out with friends and family also helps us stay motivated throughout the day.

Working fewer hours also means we have to cut off any bad management practices. Start by planning ahead, as it can help you make smarter decisions when coding. It won’t also leave you feeling exhausted afterwards.

3. Ditch the distractions

Web development is often teamwork, and naturally, comes with a lot of distractions. Meetings, simply updating another member (or your boss!) on your work, or simply catching up can shave off precious time.

Keep the interruptions to a minimum. If you work from the office, you can get yourself a busy light to stop people from talking to you. Since a simple phone call or text can somehow lead to endless hours of scrolling, put your phone and gadgets on silent to stop your mind from wandering off about your notifications. And if you have no restraint whatsoever (don’t be ashamed, most of us don’t), you can always put your gadgets in another room or get those boxes with timed locks.

4. Use the Right Tools for Web Development

A project management tool can help you plan, schedule, and get your work done. There are so many options, such as:

Bug Tracking: BackLog, MantisBT
Code Searching: The Silver Searcher
Time Tracking: HubbStaff
Project Management: Trello, Wrike, Monday.com
Code Management: GitHub, GitLab

Don’t be afraid of automation as it will take care of the tedious tasks so that you can focus on the more important ones. After making changes through automation tools, you can easily compile codes or migrate data into the database.

5. Use your Existing Work if You Can

While working on our central coast web development, we find ourselves working faster if we have old codes than we can revisit or reuse. You can tweak them accordingly to save time and decrease the possibility of being error-prone.

If possible, you can build yourself a file with generic and useful functions. Don’t lock editors into rigid page structures and let them create sites independently, so you can focus on tackling other problems.

6. Try Incorporating Code Snippets

To speed up web development, you can use code snippets. There is one for every IDE, language and framework. Look through this list of VS Code Snippet Plugins. You can even make your own Snippet.

7. Don’t be Afraid to Go Back to the Basics

We know learning the fundamentals is not fun as we want to get the work done right away. However, if you start debugging react codes without learning Javascript content, jump to Bootstrap before understanding CSS, or make a real-time chat app without understanding the basics of databases, you will be setting yourself up for failure.

Start from the bottom and build your coding strength. If not, your productivity will take a massive hit.

8. Don’t be Afraid of Your Mistakes

Coding is about learning and updating your skills as you go. As you gain more experience, you will find that you have gotten better at solving problems. You will also know what methods and practices work better for you, and which don’t. Reading codes can be helpful as well to know where you can improve.

Get yourself a mentor if you think you need one, and seek their constant feedback. Team members may also help you out, but make sure to ask for more than some generic comments.

9. Take Breaks and Take Care of Yourself

Remember to take enough breaks while you work. Once you get into the zone, you may stay hunched up at your desk for hours at a time without even noticing. Set alarms if you need to but get yourself away from your work and give your eyes some rest. Take a walk and eat if you need to.

Having quality sleep and good exercise will do wonders for your cognitive abilities, reduce stress and frustration, and gain more energy. You can always get away with overclocking your CPU, but never with your health.

Start Your Web Development Journey Right

Using the right tools and developing the right habits can do wonders for your central coast web development journey. Approach each coding session with the right attitude and a plan to help you maintain your efficiency. If you still need some advice, you can always ask the Website Guy for help.