Time is a scarce good, so I'm always looking for ways to optimize mine, the better you do it the more you can pack into your day. Developers are by nature results-driven beings, have them become unproductive for a work day... and they will be moody and frustrated the rest of the evening!

With this in mind, I'll be sharing 4 tips that work very well for me, in these areas:

• Memory Aids (reminders) — developers process a lot of "packages" per day, so it's only natural that you will have some "packet loss" during the day... devs can/try to relate a lot with UDP after all — speed, simplicity, and efficiency.
• VS Code — 2 Ninja shortcuts & 1 Visual Aid extension to rock your days!
• Communication Management — communicating well and via the proper mediums to ensure all your colleagues can follow and participate in a discussion is key, and ultimately is also about respect by giving people a proper format to contribute value to a given topic.

#1 Slack Reminders for Commitments

If you commit with somebody or a group for a specific time, set up immediately a Slack reminder. Trust me, with the amount of information we are exposed to daily, mark my words: you will forget.

Rationale: commitment is highly appreciated, but failing to comply breaks trust... unintentionally. Trust is harder to build than to break, protect it. If you are unable to reach your target, manage expectations and let your audience know you will take more time. Postponing is fine, as long as you have a reasonable reason. If you don't want to justify yourself, don't make commitments.

#2 VS Code Window Switch and Window Close

Picture this: It's 8:00 AM you just started working on some WIP feature. 30m later somebody asks you to check some bug on an unrelated service or frontend. After opening 3 VS Code windows, you find the bug, you pass the info to your colleague and proceed. 1h later, there is an error on your production service logs and you spin 2 more VS Code windows to nail down where the issue is. You're working for not even 3 hours and your desktop is already a mess — 6 VS Code instances, jest test runners doing their damage, TS server processing your code, extensions tracking your work and your codebase, and before mid-morning your laptop is ready for a cold swim, it's summer time with your CPU on fire.

Memorize the shortcuts for VS Code: Window Switch and Window Close.

• Window Switch lets you switch to any opened window (even if minimized).
• Window Close lets you quickly kill the Window if you don't need it!

#3 Peacock Extension

While working over multiple projects, switching through dark gray windows all day can be quite monotonous and hard for the brain, having to continuously look up the window title to remember the current project.

Install the Peacock extension and let it pick random colors for every new window you open with a project. Using colors as a lookup method for the human eye is way more efficient than reading text on window titles.

#4 Use the Right Communication Tools

Use Slack to spark threads and discussions, but if you want to capture essential topics and feedback around them properly — use a proper tool:

• For Technical Topics, use Miro or Confluence.
• For Design related, use the same as above or additionally Figma.

Make sure you have Confluence notifications enabled via Slack, so you don't miss the chance to iterate quickly with your colleagues.

If you end up using any of these tips and they improve your day, please drop me a message, I'll be happy to know.