Master your craft, master your tools
Focusing on typing and ergonomics changes your focus
I’m aware that this may be an unpopular opinion about typing speed, keyboards and toolings. I’m not claiming that engineers on your team need to be extremely fast typists.
But the typing shouldn’t slow them down.
Eyes on screen
Practice touch-typing, dvorak or split-keyboard with a Kinesis. Relax your wrists, elbows and palms while you are typing and get used to your main hotkeys. Use most of your hand movements to stretch and drink coffee. Leave the rest to the fingers.
No distractions
Get everything into your IDE. Console, help windows, debugging. Avoid alt-tabbing or sharing screens. If your IDE has terminals and plugins for integrating docker, tests and documentation, use it.
There is nothing worse than alt-tabbing constantly, looking for the right window only to get distracted by an opening LinkedIn page that baits you into doom-scrolling.
Learn your hotkeys
Key Promoter X in PHPStorm alerts you when you click a button that has one. Get into the habbit of learning and using more and more of your IDE’s hotkeys. It will suck the first 2-3 times while you are learning. But that’s the point.
You cannot learn without experiencing frustration.
Code generation is for compilers, not humans
Design your code to be boilerplate-free
Remember, your most constrained resource is your focus.
Get your thoughts from point A to B with minimal hurdles.
Bonus: Declutter your room.
When you look away from your screen, have pictures of your children, loved ones and something green. Get into the habbit of plugging-out easily and reconnecting with your home environment.
Your work desk is for efficiency, your work room is for comfort.
Don’t get these two mixed up.