Time Management For Software Engineers
This article is just a summary of the best practices every software engineer can use to use time efficiently. Some recommendations always work for everybody; others may work only under certain circumstances. However, you can check out all of them and see how to optimize your working time.
Concentrate On The Task
Do only one job at a time and concentrate on it. This way, you will have only one context in your mind all the time, so there will be no context changes.
Another advantage of concentration is higher overall efficiency. You can do your work faster and keep a better quality level just by concentrating on one task at a time.
Less Context Switching
Context switching is inevitable evil every busy person faces every day. It is recommended to minimize the overall number of switches by good planning, scheduling your activities, and prioritizing tasks.
If you have lots of small projects and you must take care of all of them in one day, then do everything related to each project consequentially. This way, you will not need to return to this project this day, and so you can switch between the tasks less.
If you spend lots of time in social networks, messengers, or similar applications, it is better to turn them off to avoid losing your current context. Alternatively, you may also schedule a specific time to check these applications.
Schedule Time Slots
If you know your schedule, then you can plan your day appropriately. Group your activities by project or type, roughly evaluate these groups, see what you can fit in one day, and create time slots in your calendar for each of the groups. This approach allows you to organize your time and understand the exact task at every moment.
You may build such a schedule in advance — for example, for the current or next weeks. This way, you can schedule your time in advance, group similar activities close together, and simplify your work.
An even better solution is to have a stable weekly or monthly schedule. You may try to automate some routine tasks if you know what you need to do and save some time.
Use Meeting Time Efficiently
Meetings are one of the activities that consume a lot of time and effort but do not always bring results. To shorter the meeting time, you should understand what you need to do and how long it would take. So, you have to have a strict agenda with time limits for every meeting to save extra time if it is not needed.
You may also optimize the discussion process at the meeting. Just prepare a standard template for common topics or issues, share it with everybody, and use it when it is possible. For example, if you are trying to solve a problem, then you may split the discussion into four phases:
definition of the problem;
looking for solutions or brainstorming;
choosing the best solution;
preventing the problem in the future.
Optimize Working Environment
Finally, you can see how you can improve your environment to make your work easier, faster, or more enjoyable.
The best recommendation here is to keep things as simple as possible (KISS). Get rid of objects on your table that you do not use, close the door to decrease noise level, open the window to get the fresh air, and so on.
If you are spending lots of time on the phone, you may turn it off or disable notifications. You may plan several minutes to check all of them, e.g., before lunch.
Remove all unnecessary attractions and noise sources that may prevent you from concentrating on your work. It is not always an easy task, but it may help you do work faster and save time for other activities.
These are standard best practices every software engineer may use pretty much every day to manage the time efficiently. Just try them, and you will see an improvement in the quality and efficiency of your work!