General

Tips for Better Time Management as a Software Engineer

Published Mar 8, 2021

Updated Feb 14, 2023

6 min read

This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may be relevant but please refer to the relevant official documentation or available resources for the latest information.

Tips for Better Time Management as a Software Engineer

In today's ever-growing software landscape of tools and experience to gain, we can find ourselves lost wanting to do more, yet feeling like we don't have enough hours in the day to accomplish everything we want.

This problem is all too common in every level of industry, and as software engineers we can find ourselves racing to finish multiple things yet never actually reaching the finish line with anything. If by chance we do, we're often burnt out and ready for vacation (sometimes after a few days). Sadly, we all can't be Elon Musk, but we can begin to fix our habits and patterns to feel more like a genius.

Why Is Time Management Important?

As professionals in any fields, it's important that we execute on our work in a consistent way that helps us not only feel productive, but also feel like we're helping achieve business goals as well as personal growth goals.

Taking an example straight from my own life, I found myself mentally exhausted trying to keep up with everything in my life - my job, personal projects, and my life goals. It seemed like I had so much going on, but my fatal flaw was the fact that keeping myself busy with so much didn't make me feel accomplished. Something had to change.

Benefits of Proper Time Management

Simply put, there are no downsides to better time management. The act of time management is a great key to our success in whatever we do. While it's as simple as just doing it, focus and consistency are needed to really be successful. Because we live in a world where the speed of business and technology is increasing, being decisive about priorities is even more important. Where we fail is when we try to make snap decisions especially for important tasks that require our full attention.

Not only does it take focus and consistency to succeed, but when a person knows what they're doing for the week, day, or hour, they can better focus on tasks and feel better about whatever they're doing. There's a sense of clarity that comes as a result of having a single focus on one thing and executing on it, even if it's not to completion.

Helpful Tips for Better Time Management Important

Being a master of your time can be a difficult task at first, but with some grit and determination, paving the road to success can become easier.

Say you need to meet a deadline for a project with a release in a few days. How can we make our lives easier in a short period of time?

1. Redefine Goals and Expectations

The first step is to write down all you tasks including goals, milestones, or whatever you use to describe large bodies of work. This will paint a clear picture of what is and what is not a priority.

Wins from doing this include:

framing your to-dos to better execute them
freeing your mind from trying to remember why you're doing something
strategizing how to best execute tasks

Pro tip: adding goals and activities you're already currently working on to this list helps make sure nothing is missed.

This doesn't have to be a complicated step with each goal or task being general. In the next section, we'll see how to be effective with this list.

2. Prioritize Goals and Actionable Tasks

Now we have a list of things to accomplish and activities already invested in, but we haven't figured out what to perform first.

The best way we can prioritize these items is to place value on them. Value can be added to tasks by determing how much of an impact one task can make over the other. We can even timebox them to further increase that value.

Ask youself these questions to categorize tasks:

Is it urgent and important?
Is it important, but not as urgent?
Is it urgent, but not important?
Is it neither urgent nor important?

Remember urgency often has a time limit, and importance can be specific to you or to a group of persons.

A couple of examples look like this:

Release candidate to deploy to production by 3/1/2021. Urgent because there's a due date, and important because it affects the team and/or business.
Technical task to unblock a portion of work. Doesn't have a time limit, but could help unblock yourself or another developer.

3. Make a Plan and Stick to It

Lastly, and this may be the hardest part about time management: consistency is another one of those building blocks to success and it's absolutely critical that all of the effort so far does not crash down on us.

This one really comes down to knowing how best you work. Whether it's waking up at 4:30 am to get your mind ready for the day or working out to keep your body active, figure out your motivation for the work being done and put it into your schedule.

What you gain from doing this is:

a clear visualization of what's being worked on for the day or week
what's up next on your agenda
when you'll have your breaks to recharge and finish strong

A note on breaks: developers write code, check processes, do code reviews, plan solutions to unique problems, suggest and articulate solutions, and the list goes on. Without scheduled breaks, we'd be on the fast track to burn out before the day's out.

Make a plan solid by strategizing about the plan and how you'll stick to it. It makes a world of difference to set your work space away from your bedroom, or to work at the office or a coffee shop. Prepare healthy meals ahead of time so you're not skipping meals or eating junk. Workout during the week because your body is a temple, and the mind needs the body like the body needs a fully functioning mind.

Tools to Help Structure Your Time

As stated before, write things down and block out your time, so you know what you can and can't commit to. Here are a few tools that I use to get me through the day feeling well-accomplished:

iCal - makes it easy to import multiple calendars, from one or more email addresses, into a single calendar view.

Google Calendar - you won't get the same importing features as iCal, but their interface makes it easy to add shared calendars.

If you can find a 3rd-party mail client that offers the same flexibility as iCal, I'd recommend that for the single calendar view.

Notion - Notion has changed the way I operate entirely. You can use the free version personally and for work. It just requires that you use one email address per workspace.

With Notion, you can:

Take general notes
Keep a work log
Generate to a table of tasks
Set reminders for tasks
Sort tasks into views
Use user-built templates. Some you can buy while others provide instructions on how to make them your own.

If Notion isn't the right fit for you, Evernote is another really great tool for assembling thoughts into books, articles, and notes. It also features templates more than Notion does.

Conclusion

In the earlier example of a deadline for a release candidate, it may feel like there's no time left before that deadline rolls around. That sinking feeling like you're running out of time is the reason you should manage your expectations, priorities, and time.

Only good things can come from taking back your time and focusing it. At the end of the day, you can look back and feel a sense of freedom. Be good to future you!

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

About the author(s)

Morgan Worrell
Senior Software Engineer and Affiliate Professor empowering developers to achieve their career goals. When he’s not creating online course content, you can find him playing volleyball or music and working on 3D print projects. Specialized tech: Angular
@morgnism_@morgnism

How Vim Transformed My Workflow for the Better

> Before getting into this article, I want to say that this is just my personal experience. I don’t think Vim is the best editor for everyone, but it worked well for me. What is Vim for you who don’t know? Well, Vim is a text editor, which is a tool you use to write and edit text or code on your computer. What makes Vim unique is that it has lots of keyboard shortcuts. Instead of using the mouse to click around, you can keep your fingers on the keyboard, making you faster once you get the hang of it. I've always heard good things about Vim. People say it’s great and that once you learn it, it can speed up your coding. Vim users sometimes act like they’re in a special club, which is funny. But jokes aside, I was curious because of all the good things I heard, especially about how comfy and efficient it is for coding. I knew learning Vim wouldn’t be easy. From past experiences (like learning touch typing), I knew it would be like climbing a steep hill. It's akin to learning to ride a bike with special gear. At first, it might feel tricky, but once you get used to it, you can ride faster and smoother. There’s a stage I like to call the "Hybrid" point. It's when you’re getting to grips with something new, and you're not proficient at it yet, but you also start losing comfort with the old way of doing things. This phase is a bit frustrating, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through this again as it could have led to a decrease in productivity, which was the opposite of what I was aiming for. However, the prospect of a smoother and faster coding experience kept me excited to try Vim. Discovering a New Coding Comfort Zone So, I began my journey with Vim. I started learning the basic moves by chatting with GPT and playing Vim Snake – A fun game that's like the classic snake game, but with Vim controls – Slowly but surely, I got the hang of it. Once I felt more at ease, I decided to add a Vim plugin to my IDE. 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Let's say you want to move the line of code you're on to the line below. Normally, you'd grab your mouse, highlight the code, cut it, hit enter to create a new line, paste the code, then put the mouse down to continue coding. With Vim, you just press the "dd" keys to cut and copy the line, then “p” to paste it below. And just like that, you're done! It may seem small, but when all these little time-savers add up, you end up saving a TON of time. Without Vim With Vim --- But the magic of Vim doesn't end there. You can tweak Vim in numerous ways by adding your own commands, modifying existing ones, or loading up on plugins to extend its functionality. For instance, I tried out the easy-motion plugin and it’s been a game-changer for navigating through files. I also set up shortcuts to switch between tabs, which has made things even smoother. With all these enhancements, I found myself breezing through code like a pro and seeing what I needed in no time. 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As I venture further, experimenting with Neovim and other tools, the horizon of possibilities keeps expanding. In the realm of coding, time is of the essence, and Vim has gifted me the ability to reclaim it, one keystroke at a time. It's not just about the shortcuts or the plugins; it's about the mindset of continuous learning and improvement that Vim instills. This blog post is not just an endorsement of Vim but a testament to the boundless exploration that awaits when one is willing to embrace new tools and methodologies....

Dec 20, 2023

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VimToolingSoftware EngineeringTips

7 Tips to be a Successful Developer in a Remote Company

When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, most companies were forced to go remote and millions of workers had to learn how to work from home. Two years later, a lot people now prefer the work from home option, and many job seekers are looking for remote-only companies to work for. For software developers, there are many advantages to working from home and still effectively working as a team to produce high quality results. But how can you be successful in a remote company? In this article, I will provide 7 tips on what it takes to be a successful developer in a remote company. Communication is key It is now more important than ever to communicate effectively with your team. Now that everyone is working from home instead of being in one physical office, you have to be very conscious to reach out to teammates and share your progress on a project. In a physical office, you are surrounded by other co-workers all day, which makes it easier to walk over to someone's office and share what you have been working on. It also makes it easier to have impromptu meetings with other team members throughout the day. But in a remote setting, it is very easy to become isolated and get carried away with work without reaching out to anyone all day. This becomes an issue for your team, because now they are no longer keeping up to date on the latest changes you have been contributing to the project. My tip would be to post periodic updates throughout the day of what you have been working on. If your company is using something like Slack or another chat server, make sure to post a detailed update on what you have been up to the past few hours. Here is an example of one of the status updates I would post to my team. Status update: - finished making changes to xyz case study and put it up for review - reviewed a couple of PRs - ran accessibility audits for the homepage and working on increasing the performance score I would usually post this in the middle of the day to update the team on what I have been working on. I also try to ask questions throughout the day to ensure that I don't get blocked on a particular issue for to long. This method of communication helps me stay connected with the team and helps my manager know where I am at in the project. Find a separate space in your home just for work When you are working in an office, there is a clear separation between work and home. This makes it easier to end your day and leave your work at the office. But with remote work, sometimes these lines between work and home become a little bit blurry. This is why it is important to designate a separate work space in your home. In my situation, I have a small desk in another room where I do all of my work. That space is only used Monday through Friday for work purposes. I have found that by creating a work space, it allows me to be in the moment and fully concentrate on my duties. Then at the end of the day, I logout out of everything and leave the work space just like I would leave a physical business. That has given me freedom to relax in my home when I am not working and fully recharge for the next day. I understand that everyone's living situation is different, and you might not have room for a designated work area. In those cases, do the best you can to carve out some space in your living situation just for work. The more you can do to separate home and business, the more productive you will be at work. Set consistent work hours When you are working in an office, you have set hours for when you are going to be there. It might be 9-5 or 8-3 with breaks throughout the day. But when you are working from home, it is very easy to work without a set schedule and put in more time outside of the standard work hours. This can quickly lead to burnout which is a huge issue within the developer community. It is really important to set a consistent work schedule so your team knows when you are available, and when you are off work. This also forces you to work within a time frame which will lead to better focus, time management and productivity. I have personally found that setting that time frame from 8-5 with breaks helps me structure my day better and get more done than if I had an open schedule. Take breaks throughout the day Developer health is another huge issue within the community. Many developers, including myself have gone for hours hunched over their computers trying to get something to work. In these situations, it is very easy to lose track of time and develop back, neck, shoulder, and eye problems. One of the key advantages of working from home is being able to take breaks and leave your work space. Take ten minute breaks throughout the day and make sure to walk around, stretch, go outside, and drink water. Taking breaks from the computer will give your body and brain a chance to rest and recharge. When I first started working remotely, I would be glued to the computer for hours at a time. But I quickly felt the negative health effects and started becoming more intentional about taking breaks. Now, I have developed a healthier work situation and can see the difference in the quality of work I am producing. Dress appropriately for important meetings We all enjoy the relaxed dress code that often accompanies working from home. In an office, you will typically be in a more work appropriate attire especially when it comes to meetings with clients. But when you are at home, it is very easy to work in some sweatpants and a t shirt. If you don't have any meetings that day, then coding in your casual attire is fine. But if you are meeting with clients or interviewing remotely, it is important to dress appropriately. Remember that it is still a business and you want to be as professional as possible, even in a remote setting. Avoid mixing personal tasks and work tasks When you are in an office, you don't worry about personal chores like doing laundry or taking the trash out. But when you are working from home, it is very easy to get distracted and mix personal tasks with work tasks. It is very important that while you are working, you are focused on work. Then during breaks, you can take care of personal items. In my situation, I make sure to finish up the task I was working on and then take a break to put a load of laundry on or take care of another personal chore. There are definitely times where something has come up and I will make sure to communicate that with the team so they know I will be unavailable for a certain amount of time. But just try to do the best that you can separating personal tasks and issues from your work tasks. Time management and structuring your day In order to work productively, it is important to plan out your day as best you can and structure your time accordingly. For example, as I am writing this blog today, I made sure to set aside time for writing the first draft, revising it and submitting it for review. During that time block, I am not focused on other PR's or other work responsibilities. That ensures I am focused 100% on writing a high quality article. Once I complete a large task, then I make sure to take a break, hydrate, walk around and eat something. That allows me to energize and gear up for the next task in my day. I found that breaking up my day into manageable tasks has provided me the opportunity to focus and produce good work. Conclusion Those are my 7 tips on what it takes to be a successful developer in a remote company. I encourage you to give each of those tips a try and see how it affects your work productivity....

May 16, 2022

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Angular vs React Change Detection

As we begin a new project, we often encounter the question of which framework can best solve an immediate set of problems. Typically that decision comes down to understanding different languages, frameworks, and architectural patterns. With React constantly growing in popularity, it's imperative that those looking to refresh their understanding of certain tools, or learn a new library, be able to transpose concepts between tools towards a similar outcome. We'll be taking a look at how we can reap the benefits of better performance by comparing Angular and React Change Detection strategies. _The following concepts and examples assumes familiarity with Angular or React._ - What is Change Detection? - Angular Change Detection - React - React Hooks What is Change Detection? Change Detection (CD) is the mechanism used to track and update changes in an application's state. The changes happen under the hood but effectively align the UI with the state of the app. At its base, simple data structures are represented in the DOM and represent something to the user. By introducing different event types and enacting them with JavaScript, we can perform updates to these objects. A simple counter track that takes a click to increase a value by one is an example of modifying an app's state via an event. ` Angular Change Detection One of the features of the popular Angular framework is its Change Detection which, if not utilized effectively, can create performance hits on enterprise applications. Angular Change Detection works by using Zone.js and activating after every async action performed. CD traversal starts at the root component (usually App) and works its way down the component tree updating the DOM as needed. ` What makes Angular's CD beneficial is the ability to either omit components from re-rendering partially or entirely. What's happening under the hood is that browser events are registered into Zone.js - Angular's mechanism for orchestrating async events - which emits changes after initial template bindings are created. While Angular CD can be triggered manually, we can rely on it to trigger automatically. ` React React's CD is different in implementation than Angular primarily due to its use of Virtual DOM (VDOM). React CD is always updated whenever state updates occur whether in class-based components or function components. The render function of a class component or the return of function components is triggered with every state update. In every run of render, there is a "snapshot" of the VDOM. The new version of a snapshot is compared to the previous version, and patch-updated accordingly. ` React Hooks In the latest implementation of React with function components, leveraging hooks like useState and useEffect make function components stateful, and allow for control when the app state is updated. Conclusion Learning to switch between app libraries and frameworks comes with a learning curve for each one. However, understanding core concepts about them helps in not only determining which is most effective for the task at hand, but the history of these changes as they impact our long-term development goals. Angular and React have been big players in the field for many years. But as newer toolsets like Svelte, Vue, and Remix enter the arena, these concepts can be translated more fluidly....

Oct 10, 2022

3 mins

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Svelte 5 is Here!

Svelte 5 was finally released after a long time in development. Fortunately, we've been able to test it for some time, and now it has a stable release. Let's dig into its features and why this is such a significant change, even though Svelte 4 code is almost 100% compatible. Svelte syntax everywhere This is one of my favorite additions. Previously, Svelte syntax was limited to a component element. Refactoring code from a component and moving it to a JavaScript file worked differently. Now you can use the .svelte.js or .svelte.ts extension, which allows you to use the same syntax everywhere. It's important to note that it's a way to express that this is not just JS, and what you write may be compiled to something else, just like .svelte files are not just html even though they look very similar. Runes The introduction of runes is one of the most significant changes in Svelte. Many users felt attracted to variables being instantly reactive in previous versions. ` There was, however, a lot of magic underneath and a considerable amount of work from the compiler to make it behave reactively. $state In Svelte 5, a reactive variable has to be explicitly declared using the $state rune, which brings a clear distinction between what is reactive and what isn’t. ` In the previous code, $state is not an actual function being called; it's a hint for the compiler to do something special with this declaration. Rune names always start with a dollar sign ($) and do not need to be imported. However, there’s much more to the changes than just the way we declare reactive variables. Runes bring a lot of new features that make Svelte 5 a great improvement. In Svelte 5, objects or arrays use Proxies to allow for granular reactivity, meaning that individual properties in an object are reactive, even if they are nested objects or arrays. If you modify a property, it will only update that property and will not trigger an update on the whole object. It also supports triggering updates when methods like array.push are called. In previous versions, an assignment was required to trigger an update: ` To have a similar behavior of svelte 4 (no deep reactivity), use the $state.raw() rune. This syntax of .* is common for related features of a rune: $state.raw() will require an assignment to trigger reactivity. ` Because proxies are used, you may need to extract the underlying state instead of the proxy itself. In that case, $state.snapshot() should be used: ` $derived We will use $derived and $derived.by to declare a derived state. The two runes are essentially the same, except one allows us to use a function instead of an expression, allowing for more complex operations to calculate the derived values. ` $effect Effects are useful for running something triggered by a change in state. One of the things you'll note from the $effect rune is that dependencies don't need to be explicit. Those will be picked from reactive values read synchronously in the body of the effect function. ` Something to bear in mind is that these dependencies are picked each time the effect runs. The values read during the last run become the dependencies of the effect. ` Depending on the result of the random method, foo or bar will stop being a dependency of the effect. You should place them outside the condition so they can trigger reruns of the effect. *Variants* of the effect rune are $effect.pre, which runs before a DOM update, and $effect.tracking(), which checks for the context of the effect (true for an effect inside an effect or in the template). $props This rune replaces the export let keywords used in previous versions to define a component's props. To use the $props syntax, we can consider it to return an object with all the properties a component receives. We can use JavaScript syntax to destructure it or use the rest property if we want to retrieve every property not explicitly destructured.. ` $bindable If you want to mutate a prop so that the change flows back to the parent, you can use the $bindable prop to make it work in both directions. A parent component can pass a value to a child component, and the child component is able to modify it, returning the data back to the parent component. ` $inspect The $inspect rune only works in dev mode and will track dependencies deeply. By default, it will call console.log with the provided argument whenever it detects a change. To change the underlying function, use $inspect.with().with): ` $host The host rune gives access to the host element when compiling as a custom element: ` ` Other changes Another important change is that component events are just props in Svelte 5, so you can destructure them using the $props() rune: ` A special children property can be used to project content into a component instead of using slots. Inside the components, use the [@render[(https://svelte.dev/docs/svelte/@render) tag to place them. ` Optional chaining (?.) prevents from attempting to render it if no children are passed in. If you need to render different components in different places (named slots before Svelte 5, you can pass them as any other prop, and use @render with them. Snippets Snippets allow us to declare markup slices and render them conveniently using the render tag (@render). They can take any number of arguments. ` Snippets can also be passed as props to other components. ` ` Conclusion Some exciting changes to the Svelte syntax were introduced while, at the same time, maximum compatibility efforts were made. This was a massive rewrite with numerous improvements in terms of performance, bundle size, and DX. Besides that, a new CLI has been released, making the whole experience of starting a project or adding features delightful. If you haven't tried Svelte before, it's a great time to try it now....

Nov 27, 2024

4 mins

Svelte

Let's innovate together!

We're ready to be your trusted technical partners in your digital innovation journey.

Whether it's modernization or custom software solutions, our team of experts can guide you through best practices and how to build scalable, performant software that lasts.

Tips for Better Time Management as a Software Engineer

Tips for Better Time Management as a Software Engineer

Why Is Time Management Important?

Benefits of Proper Time Management

Helpful Tips for Better Time Management Important

1. Redefine Goals and Expectations

2. Prioritize Goals and Actionable Tasks

3. Make a Plan and Stick to It

Tools to Help Structure Your Time

Conclusion

Morgan Worrell

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How Vim Transformed My Workflow for the Better

7 Tips to be a Successful Developer in a Remote Company

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Svelte 5 is Here!

Let's innovate together!

You might also like

How Vim Transformed My Workflow for the Better

7 Tips to be a Successful Developer in a Remote Company

Angular vs React Change Detection

Svelte 5 is Here!