I definitely do not consider myself a "highly productive" person in the sense I believe you are referring to. I am productive though and have found little trick

I definitely do not consider myself a "highly productive" person in the sense I believe you are referring to. I am productive though and have found little tricks that have helped me personally. 1. If I am working on a large project I try to keep it split into very small pieces. I only work on a small piece at a time and switch between pieces often. This keeps my mind going. It also helps if you start to get stuck and lose focus by looking things up or just outright losing interest in what you are working on. By breaking it into small pieces you tend to complete more items and it tricks your mind into staying focused (at least for me). As someone else pointed out, a big time suck for developers is having to look things up. If I know that I want to get 20 things done in a day, I will work to get as many as possible done before I get stuck having to look something up. Sometimes I find that doing other things will freshen my mind and I no longer need to look it up. 2. If I find myself getting stuck or losing focus, I get up immediately and do something else non-work related. I may go for a 15-20 minute walk, grab a cup of coffee, or read HN. 3. I try to go to sleep at, or around, the same time every night and try to wake up at, or around, the same time every day. Being in a routine helps. 4. Watch what you eat/drink. I used to drink a couple beers every night, smoke, and drank a lot of soda. I stopped drinking 2 years ago (I still have a beer every now and then at events or with dinner on occasion), I quit smoking (been a year now), and gave up soda entirely (haven't had one in 3 years). Combined with exercising more and watching what I eat I have found this alone the biggest improvement to my staying focused and being productive. I also used to eat late at night, which didn't help my sleep cycle and also is bad for your health in general. I forced myself to get on a more routine diet, or at least eating cycle.