As a someone who codes frequently, in daily basis in fact, I need an environment that is able to boost my productivity when coding. Some might argue that one could be productive in every given environment. That is the ideal case, however live is not. Hence, productivity tools and workflows are created.

During my coding adventure, I found some ways that help me to boost up my productivity, which are listed below.

Use *nix platform

It come across to me that I use shell (terminal) a lot when writing a program, e.g., navigating through directories, executing commands, committing to local and remote repositories etc. In that regards, no better OS to provide that other than *nix (either OS X or linux). Moreover, they are more stable, more secure and easier to configure rather than Windows. The last part is a bit bias as I have not been using Windows for several years now, maybe in the latest release Windows are more configurable than the previous versions. Well, I’m a pragmatic person, I use what works for me.

Use your most comfortable editor

I use Sublime Text 3 to code mostly everything, except Java (I’m still using Eclipse for that). Sublime Text is a powerful yet easy to use text editor that provides a lot of functionalities. Moreover, it has myriad of plugins to make developer’s life easier and tons of themes please the eyes, which is also a very important thing (to me at the very least). If you miss the efficient vim key bindings, use vintageaus to emulate vim key bindings inside Sublime Text.

Change to zsh

See Brendon Repp’s presentation on why to zsh. I use oh-my-zsh to manage the zsh configuration and all. To sugar its visual, I use the agnoster theme. Besides, the theme directly tells me in what git branch I’m currently working on in an awesome way. Hence no need to type git status to see the working branch. Combined with the right git aliases, it feels like home when coding.

Add aliases your shell

Having short aliases is always a good thing to reduce finger movements when typing in a terminal regardless of what shell you are using. One of useful alias is aliases to go the the frequently visited directoris. So, instead of typing cd ~/codes/learning/nodejs it’s simpler to just type learn-nodejs right?!

Adopt GitHub Flow and the supporting git aliases

I have been using GitHub Flow for sometime in my recent projects and find it is a really straight forward approach in managing the development-deployment workflow when using git. Adding the GitHub flow aliases to your ~/.gitconfig will be even more fun. Here’s my .gitconfig’s aliases section that has some additional aliases beside the GitHub flow aliases.

Have a To-do list

A to-do list is a really powerful tool to manage and prioritize your tasks. Sometimes it is taken for granted but it does help to keep the focus on the tasks that should be done, especially for an easily distracted person (just like myself). No need for fancy tools to create a to-do list, any text editor will do. However, Evernote or OS X’s Notes or other to-do list apps will be better choice.

I don’t claim the list above is the best way to increase your coding productivity but it works for me and my current working environment. The list is not and will never be the final one because achieving better productivity is a long live adventure.