Happy Sunday! I'm taking a break from the algorithms this week to write about something near and dear to my heart: productivity. As someone who's currently looking for a job, my days are wide open and thus I have to hold myself accountable for getting work done. It can feel a little overwhelming to be faced with a new day and no plan of how to fill it. So with that, my first tip:

schedule everything

Like a lot of people these days, I have a virtual calendar. I use it to keep track of the many events, meetups, dinners, hikes, etc. that happen in my life. A few weeks into my job search I realized that a whole day could go by and I would wonder, 'what did I even do today?' Or I would wake up with no real plan of what I wanted to accomplish.

I will say, I'm a born planner; I briefly considered becoming the next Marie Kondo. So I decided to start planning out my days ahead of time, in (possibly excessive) detail. I created a separate calendar and add blocks of time, usually 1 to 2 hours, to work on various tasks. Some examples from my own calendar include: LeetCode, clean kitchen, admin, slack bot.

I'm always moving tasks around, adjusting times, and adding new ones. Now I can have a clear idea of what my day looks like, and no longer look back wondering what I even accomplished. Productivity win!

take breaks

As I schedule everything now, that means I also schedule time to relax. We all know it's important to take breaks, but sometimes it can be hard to remember, especially when you're deep in the coding zone. Now, if it's on the calendar, I can look forward to it, which makes me more productive!

I also like to schedule 'admin' time, which is a fancy way of saying 'check every social media site 5 times'. It's usually about an hour of time for me to check my finances, socials, and watch a Gourmet Makes video (you're welcome).

if it takes less than 5 minutes, just do it now

A final tip that I find very effective is to just do the small things now. There are so many little things that might not be super urgent and thus are easy to keep putting off. Some examples from my own life include taking out the trash, putting away my laundry, or cleaning off my desk. All simple things that once completed, make me feel great!

Well there we have it, my top three tips for keeping up your productivity. Thanks for reading, see you next week!