I would say: 1) get rid of distractions 2) stop creating bugs 3) get really good in debugging This sounds a little odd bug getting rid of distractions (set al

I would say: 1) get rid of distractions 2) stop creating bugs 3) get really good in debugging This sounds a little odd bug getting rid of distractions (set all you favorite websites in /etc/hosts to points to 127.0.0.1) forces you to focus on the problem. Stop creating bugs is impossible, but you can make your best afford to test your code and write good code (read the book "clean code") But I think the biggest speed improvement is if you are really good in debugging. It can take a good debugger to find a bug in a distributed system in 15 minutes, a inexperienced developer can spend over a day and have no clue what the problem is.