How to be More Productive - Detail

Make it easier to find

• Put frequently used apps (like Google Keep) in first screen, etc
  
• Add bookmark with short and easy to remember name in Chrome to make it easier to find
  
• Delete history in Chrome to make search/autocompletion in Address bar work better
  • Check here for how to google search like a pro
• Minimize(or kill) windows that are not going to be used recently

How to Save Context

• Compile error
  
• TODO tag
  
• Put the web page into a new window
  • When we find something online that we should read or search later, we can shift+w to put this page into a new window so we can go back to it later.
    
  • We can also use The Great Suspender to suspend the new tab or window so these pages don’t consume a lot of RAM.
• Git diff
  
• Undo then redo in editor
  • Use Case: After search, or move pointer, we would like to go back to last edit position.

Pin

• Use Atom pinned-tabs to pin files that you are constantly working on recently
  
• “PINNED-TABS: CLOSE UNPINNED” if needed.

Preserve Last Session

• Set Chrome, iTerm2, Atom to restore last session.
  
• In Atom, select Preserve Last Search for Command Palette and Fuzzy Finder

2X player

• Shift+>(<) to increase/decrease speed in Youtube
  
• for pan.baidu
  • videojs.getPlayers("video-player").html5player.tech_.setPlaybackRate(2)
    
  • user scripts to change html5 video player speed
• X movie in 10 minutes etc

What to do at Spare Time (<5)

• Clear things in Gmail(delete emails or draft), Google Keep

What else we can do

• During development, the depended service is down, before they fix it, we can still clean the code or create the PR.

Example

• Need a pr to test branch in another remote to make some experiment -> directly push to the test branch
  
• Run multiple long-time(>2+ seconds) commands together: delete.sh && build.sh && deploy.sh
  
• During development/test, don’t make change in the build output,
  • When we apply the change back to source, we may forget what change we have made, or waste some time to figure it out.

java.time Best Practices

Table of Contents

• Types in Java.time
• No time zone
• With time zone
• APIs
• Traps
• Avoid any APIs that use the default system time zone
• Avoid offset-based “time zones”
• Don’t use primitives to represent dates or times
• Converting between time units
• Misc Tips
• Use Timestamp and Duration in protocolbuffers
• From Error Prone
• Date-Time Design Principles
• Problems with old Date/Calendar

Generics in Java

Table of Contents

• Upper Bounds: <? extends Foo>
• Unbounded Wildcards: <?>
• Lower Bounded: <? super Foo>
• Unbounded Wildcards: <?>
• Wildcards and Subtyping
• Guidelines for Wildcard Use
• Wildcard Examples
• Type Parameter Names
• Type Erasure
• Generic and Array doesn’t work well
• Don’t add any more type parameters than you have to
• Generic in JDK Collection
• Subclassing with Generic Types

How to Choose Right Types in Java

Table of Contents

• Avoid using primitive data types to represent domain ideas: Primitive Obsession
• Prefer Immutable Types
• How General/Specific in parameter or return types?
• Collections
• Avoid semantic-free types

How to be More Productive

What Problems to Solve

• is it worth?
• to what extent?
• Should we fix it now? or put it into backlog and solve it later?
  • Our brain will work on the problem in background, after we work on more same problem/domain, it may be much easier to solve it.
• what you try to achieve or learn

Priority

• work on the most important thing
  • put trivial things into backlog

Proactive

Track + Notification

• Use Timer for wakeup
• Use Calendar to track event, deadline
• Use Keep to track ideas/todo

Less Distraction

Turn off unnecessary notification

• Gmail
  • Gmail App only notifies email from primary category
  • Figure our why it’s marked as important and remove its filter or move it out from Primary category

Schedule

Health

• sleep and wake up at the same time

Sleep & Rest

• Do Not Disturb at Bedtime
• unclutter your mind

Music

• to wake up
• get excited

Wake up

• My wife is a teacher, so she wakes up very early at 6:00 am
• It’s best for me to adjust accordingly: wake up early.

Track TODO

• Write Email Now And Send It Later
  • Schedule Send
• Draft email
  • whenever you remember you need to send one email, create one draft first

Developer TODO

• TODO
• leave a compile error

Motivation

• Have a thing to do/wake up tomorrow

Get Things Done

• the problem/pain-point, find a way to fix it
• Write things down