Thinking of what you did all day? Or all Week? Not seeing any remarkable or at least an acknowledgeable results? You might just be suffering from unproductivity! Many programmers work a lot and continuously having sleepless nights and days alike but don’t record much results. Why?

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of a person, machine, factory, system, etc., in converting inputs into useful outputs, according to businessdictionary.com And hence when programmers (engineers) are unproductive, it means their efforts are inefficient and their output low or of an inferior quality. What are you doing or not doing that is causing you to be unproductive? Here are the possible causes of that!

1) Working on Multiple Projects (Multitasking)

Meanwhile multitasking means doing so many things simultaneously it’s usually associated with smaller activities like chatting on WhatsApp, sending a mail and catching up with a video on YouTube!

Well, working on multiple projects as a programmer is a “whole nother” level of multitasking as each project may even pose the need for you to sub-multitask (doing the little things). Meanwhile this can be good in some sense, it can also be very disastrous if not well handled it can downplay on a programmers productivity and quality of work! This is even worst when the programmer is under pressure to complete one project or the other!

2) Doing all the Work Alone!

It’s quite common to see programmers doing all the work alone! Think of a developer working for a startup for example and has to worry about the API, website, mobile app, maintaining the server, fixing bugs and also have to worry about where to place the button in the app (designing)! Doing all that can lead to serious inefficiency! If you must to all the work alone, do it step by step and set reasonable datelines to complete the work! You won’t have the API, website, and App deployed in one month just like you wish!

3) Distractions

And you are concentrating removing the bugs and seeing it work? Then you hear your phone beep! You pick it up before you know 30mins has elapsed, you decide to do a brief stop at you mail box then you notice you have to clean it up so many mails! Maybe a beep from the Facebook tab also happens or you remembered you had to checkout Joe’s new website!

All these “5-minute” activities are real causes of unproductivity and in fact all that makes you very tired at the end of the day.

4)Too many Programmer Tools

Just like doing all the work, using so many tools can reduce your productivity this is even worst with people doing all the work! Imagine you have to use the server administration issue tracker, use photoshop for the designs, android studio, pycham/phpstorm and maybe logging in and out severally to gain access to those that require authentication and all that! While using a few tools that compliment each other can boost up your productivity using so many of them will do the exact opposite

5) Know your Productivity Peaks (active hours)

Knowing when you are most productive as a programmer is very important, some programmers are very productive at night while others are productive during the day! If you play so well with night, then just manage to do the little you can in the day as a little plus to yourself! Bearing in mine that you have to maintain good sleep cycles.

6) Lack of Internet/poor Internet Connection

At first glance one might be like, what does Internet have do with ones productivity? Well, for programmers this is very important. the lack of Internet connection for a programmer is a very demotivating factor! Despite the ability to code without Internet the Internet is becoming an integral part of coding everyday! Programmers use it to “push and pull” from servers, run updates, install urgent dependencies, find solutions to their bugs and even test applications that need to be tested. The availability of poor Internet can even be more annoying than not having Internet at all ! No one wants to run a command and wait all day!

7) Fatique/Lack of Motivation

This is tiredness, the lack of motivation to work, laziness, dizziness and all what not! This can be caused by multiple reasons including lack of enough sleep, poor eating habits, too much coffee, not drinking water, doing no exercise, not interacting with people socially etc. The causes are many what ever the cause may be you just have to find it! You cant afford to be demotivated and tired while your precious time is wasting!

8) Personal Organization

Learn how to organize yourself like and individual write a plan of what you want to do and when (everyday) stick to it as much as you can! Randomly doings can lead to significant time wastage and hence a drop in productivity.

There’s this thing about 5D’s (Decision, Determination, Discipline, Dedication and Datelines), anytime you want a situation to change you should apply this! First of all you have to decide to become more productive. Be determined, do stuff that will help you achieve, organize yourself, find the source of your demotivation, understand your performance peaks, work at it and be disciplined!