How to Save Your Brainpower and Code More Efficiently

As developers, our minds are our most valuable asset. The work we do is mentally taxing – it requires deep focus, complex problem solving, and learning new things on a daily basis. It‘s crucial that we protect and preserve our brainpower to avoid burnout and maximize our productivity.

In this post, I‘ll share proven strategies and tools to help you reduce cognitive load, code more efficiently, and get more done – without sacrificing your mental wellbeing. These are techniques I‘ve honed over many years in the trenches as a professional developer. Apply them consistently and I‘m confident you‘ll see improvements in your energy levels, output, and overall satisfaction with your work.

Optimize Your Development Environment

Your coding environment has a huge impact on cognitive load. A setup rife with distractions and friction is going to drain your mental energy quickly. On the flip side, a highly optimized environment will help you stay in flow and get more done with less effort.

Start by eliminating distractions. Turn off notifications on your devices. Close non-essential apps and browser tabs. If you work in an office, put on noise-canceling headphones or find a quiet space to focus.

Next, streamline your workflow with a powerful, minimal code editor. I‘m a big fan of Visual Studio Code for its speed, customizability and huge library of extensions. Spend some time learning your editor‘s keyboard shortcuts – this lets you navigate and manipulate code quickly without reaching for the mouse.

A few choice editor extensions can work wonders for productivity:

• Customize your color theme to reduce eyestrain and make important code elements visually pop. My current favorite is Dracula.
• Add vertical rulers to keep line lengths in check and code readable
• Use a minimap to navigate long files with ease
• Enhance the default syntax highlighting to more easily distinguish code constructs. For example, highlight different bracket pairs in different colors, or dim punctuation.
• Install language-specific extensions for powerful features like autocompletion, real-time error detection, type checking, refactoring and more. A few of my go-tos are Python, ESLint, Prettier.

The goal is to shape your environment to minimize friction and distractions, so you can focus your brainpower fully on the task of writing code.

Leverage Automation

Computers are really good at doing repetitive tasks – so let them! Whenever you find yourself doing the same thing over and over, look for a way to automate it. This frees up your brainpower for higher-level coding and problem solving.

Some examples:

• Use code snippets to quickly insert common code patterns. Most editors make it easy to define your own snippets.
• Set up project templates and scaffolding tools to automatically generate boilerplate code and project structure.
• Automate the build, test and deployment pipeline as much as possible. Let robots handle the drudge work of running tests, linting, minifying, deploying to staging/prod.
• Learn and use your editor‘s refactoring tools to automatically rename variables, extract methods, etc.
• Got a repetitive task not covered by existing tooling? Script it up! Investing a little time up front to automate it will pay big dividends.

Work Smarter with Git

Source control, and Git in particular, is a critical part of any developer‘s toolkit. Used well, it can be a massive productivity multiplier and an insurance policy for your sanity. Here are a few Git tips to make your coding more efficient:

• Use meaningful, convention-driven commit messages to make your project history more navigable and understandable. A clear history makes it easier to track down bugs and understand the evolution of the codebase.
• Commit early and often. Regular micro-commits make it easy to jump back to a working state when something goes wrong. It also clearly shows your train of thought for future maintainers (including yourself).
• Use branches liberally to isolate work in progress, experiment, and make your commit history cleaner.
• Learn Git‘s more advanced features like interactive rebasing, cherry-picking, and bisecting – they can help you surgically manipulate your commit history.
• Consider using a GUI tool like GitKraken or SourceTree to visualize branches, diffs and project history. Sometimes a clear visual model is easier to reason about than the command line.

Sharpen Your Debugging Skills

We all spend a huge amount of time and brainpower troubleshooting bugs. Improving your debugging skills and toolkit can make you significantly more productive and reduce a lot of frustration. Some tips:

• Understand the scientific method and apply it to debugging. Form a hypothesis, design an experiment to test it, gather data, refine your theory. Rinse and repeat.
• Leverage the debugging tools in your editor and browser. Learn to use breakpoints, watch expressions, and the various inspector panes to gather data about the faulty code.
• Practice rubber duck debugging – explain the problem out loud line by line to an inanimate object (or a patient coworker). The act of explicitly articulating the problem often uncovers the solution.
• Improve your searching skills. Learn to quickly find relevant results on Stack Overflow, documentation, and issue trackers. Knowing how to search well can save you hours of head-scratching.
• If you‘re really stuck, don‘t hesitate to ask for help. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is all you need. There‘s no shame in reaching out to coworkers or the broader developer community.

Make Friends with the Docs

Good developers have a secret weapon: they read the documentation. It‘s tempting to jump right into banging out code, but you can save yourself a ton of time and frustration by first reading the relevant docs. Adopt a documentation-first approach:

• When you‘re using a new language, framework or library, start by thoroughly reading the official guides and API reference. Get a high-level understanding of the key concepts, features and conventions before you write a line of code.
• Spend a little time each week reading docs and articles to expand your knowledge – even if it‘s not immediately applicable to your current work. The more you know, the faster you can solve new problems.
• Don‘t forget about your own code‘s documentation! Writing documentation forces you to clarify your thinking and design. It‘s also an investment in your future self and other developers who will maintain the code later.

Take Breaks to Recharge

When you‘re racing to solve a tough problem or meet a deadline, it‘s easy to fall into the trap of coding for hours on end without coming up for air. But non-stop coding sessions are actually counterproductive. Your brain needs rest to operate at peak efficiency.

Make a point to take regular breaks:

• Use the Pomodoro Technique: set a timer and focus intensely for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break. After 4 pomodoros, take a longer 15-20 minute break.
• Periodically get up and move around. Take a short walk, stretch, or do some light exercises. Physical movement promotes mental clarity.
• Give your eyes a screen break. Look out a window, close your eyes, or focus on a distant object for a few minutes.
• Stay hydrated and nourished. Hunger and dehydration can tank your brainpower without you even realizing it.

It may feel like you don‘t have time for breaks when deadlines are looming. But the renewed focus and energy you‘ll gain will more than make up for the time spent recharging.

Constantly Refactor

Clean, well-organized code is much easier for our brains to reason about than spaghetti code. Make a habit of constantly refactoring and improving code quality as you work:

• Keep functions and classes small and focused on a single responsibility
• Give variables, functions and classes clear, intention-revealing names
• Encapsulate complex logic in well-named functions to make the code more self-documenting
• Avoid deep nesting – prefer early returns and flat conditionals
• Refactor duplicated code into shared functions
• Exploit language features like destructuring, higher-order functions, templates and generics to reduce verbosity and make code more declarative
• Delete unused code and comments to reduce clutter

Small refactorings may feel inefficient in the moment, but they more than pay off by reducing future cognitive load. Cleaner code == happier, more productive developers.

Learn and Experiment

It‘s easy to stagnate and burn out if you‘re not growing your skills and exploring new ideas. Carve out some time each week for learning and experimentation:

• Learn a new language, library or tool, even if you don‘t have an immediate use case. You never know when that new knowledge will come in handy on a future project.
• When you find an interesting new technique or idea, build a small proof of concept. The hands-on experience will cement your understanding.
• Participate in open source projects to absorb best practices and get experience with different technologies and codebases.
• Attend meetups and conferences, watch conference talk videos, read blog posts – expose yourself to a diverse array of ideas and perspectives from other developers.

Investing in your growth keeps your skills sharp and your mind flexible. It also makes your day-to-day work more engaging and can even open the door to new career opportunities.

Wrapping Up

Whew, that was a lot! If you made it this far, you‘re well on your way to becoming a happier, more efficient coder. Remember, these aren‘t one-time optimizations – they‘re habits and practices to continually apply over the course of your career.

Some key takeaways:

• Actively optimize and prune your coding environment to minimize distractions and friction
• Automate repetitive tasks as much as possible
• Use Git effectively to make your coding more organized and efficient
• Hone your debugging skills – they‘re a developer‘s secret weapon
• RTFM – read documentation early and often
• Take regular breaks to keep your mind fresh
• Refactor mercilessly to keep code clean and maintainable
• Never stop learning and experimenting

Now it‘s your turn – pick one or two of these strategies and try applying them this week. I think you‘ll be pleasantly surprised by how much more you can get done with less effort. Happy coding!