Are there habits I should acquire or gear I should purchase to make things easier? Do you all have any tips to stay energized and productive in a desk job?
When you break between sprints, make sure you're getting up and walking around - not just surfing Facebook. Get some water. Stretch. Do a few jumping jacks. Go to the kitchen and spend 5 minutes talking to whoever else is taking a break at the same time. Look out the window at the furthest thing you can see, to let your eyes relax.
Eat your lunch outside the office. Grab a sandwich and take a walk or sit in a nearby park. The point is to get your brain some variety.
Make sure you're getting enough exercise outside work. Be it jogging every morning, cycling to work, visiting the gym at lunch, pickup soccer in the afternoons, a softball league...
And finally, consider a sit-stand desk. Something as simple as changing posture can go a long way toward reducing physical and mental fatigue.
Plus regular exercise, healthy eating, getting enough sleep, and avoiding things that cause you to crash (soda, junk food, sugar in coffee, etc). Some colleagues have found standing desks useful, but that's very individual.
I use a vertical mouse but that's to avoid RSI, not to increase productivity (e.g. Anker 2.4G, or 3M Ergonomic Mouse). I also use a keyboard with Dome or Scissor Switches (think: laptop keyboard) on purpose since the depression pressure is lower (i.e. your fingers work less hard per keypress) which also helps with RSI. I also set brightness around 20-30% on LCDs and turn DPI on Windows up to 125% to help with eyestrain.
FWIW, I've been using the Qbserve [0] time-tracking app. Even on a day like this, where I got in at around 6:30 AM and felt like I'd been writing code and documentation non-stop, it shows that I've only spent 5.5 hours (out of about 9 hours at work) on "productive" tasks (Sublime Text + Terminal + spreadsheets). I feel pretty drained, but I've apparently had about 3.5 hours of downtime.
If you don't already have headphones, get a pair, though that seems like obvious advice. I have some pretty good traditional headphones but I've found it useful to occasionally switch to wireless bluetooth ones that don't have the weight of a full set of headphones [1]
[0] Show HN: Qbserve https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778077
We're in an open floor plan and so I don't get more than maybe 20 minutes of focus at most before people talking near me disturbs me.
Maybe it's because of the eye strain difference, but I can sit and read a book for hours upon hours and not have an issue while something about sitting at a desk and staring at a computer makes me want start to fidget and look elsewhere.
IMHO fancy gear and trying to force new habits are only curing symptoms of of a more underlying problem: the tasks you’re doing at your new job are too divorced from what you want to accomplish day-to-day (could also be due to genuine lack of energy which is covered by another comment).
Take some time figure out some goals for yourself if you don’t have any yet, connect the dots between what you have to accomplish in your new job to those goals, then connect the minute tasks you do at your desk to those accomplishments. If you just keep doing work without tying it to something bigger it will definitely be an uphill battle to stay focused on what you must get done.
Though tying your job to your goals is definitely not a silver bullet. There are other tricks to try out after setting your goals that could help, such as using the pomodoro technique.
1) Make your mind sharper
2) Make your tasks clearer
3) Make your distractions more distant.
-------------- 1. Sharpening your mind
Your mind is a part of your body, so you need to take care of your body.
A) Have good sleep hygiene. I need 8.5 hours of sleep a night to be at my best. Figure out what that number is for you and follow through on it. An extra hour of wakefulness is a waste of time if it makes you 40% as effective the next day. Make sure your mattress doesn't suck. If it does, definitely spend the $200 for a new one[1]. Play white noise[2] on your phone and put your phone away from you as you sleep so you aren't tempted by it at night. Spend $10 on a good sleeping mask [3]. Go to sleep and get up at the same times every day, even on weekends.
B) Eat good food with a high protein content. The very cheapest way to do this is something like soylent[4] and a blender bottle[5]. Somewhat better than that is using paprika[6] to plan meals and cook food with a timered slow cooker[7], but keep in mind that setting up an efficient kitchen takes time. Another method is to prep all your meals on Sunday[8]
C) Excercise and meditate regularly. A 20-minute intense run is really great for keeping yourself sharp. Not only that, but when you feel like your head is full of cotton, this is a good way to clear your mind.
----------------- 2) Make your tasks more clear.
If your tasks or goals lack clarity, then it is that much harder to figure out what your next step is, so your brain will seek stimulation and micro-accomplishment where it can. This is a more complicated topic because it depends on your company culture. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a good read on this topic.
Frequent communication is important. Daily standups are good. Pairing is great, particularly as you are starting out and you are at the keyboard so that someone's knowledge flows through you.
With programming, one of the most important things you can do is use Test Driven Development. It leads you to break down tasks and give yourself a clear next task: make the failing test pass.
If you are asked to work with an API and the documentation is in a foreign language, insist that the company hires professional translation.
If you join a company and can't find out whom you report to, start looking for a new job.
----------- 3) Make distractions more distant.
Replace the "frequently visited pages" new tab screen with a calming natural image[9].
Block yourself from visiting distracting pages using Freedom, which lets you make different sets of urls to block and lets you schedule them to come on automatically[10].
[1] http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/90283797/
[2] https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/rainy-mood-rain-sounds-for/i... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.TailoredMu...
[3] http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/bucky-reg-40-b...
[4] https://www.soylent.com/product/powder/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5PTTH0ftsY
[7] http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-slow-cooker/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/MealPrepSunday/
[9] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/momentum/laookkfkn...