Would you like to be more productive? Who doesn’t want to get more done in the same amount of time?  The secret isn’t additional automation tools or learning to use your development environment better (although both are good ideas). It isn’t the Pomodoro technique or the GTD system (though both are useful). So what is the number one productivity hack for software developers?

Take care of your health.

As a software developer, your number one asset is sitting between your ears. Above all else, you are paid for what you know and what you can learn. The best thing you can do for your career is to take care of your brain. To do that, you have to take care of the body that hauls it around, protects it, and supplies it with oxygen, blood and other nutrients.

It took me a while to learn this. I was the typical scrawny kid back in school. I wasn’t on the school sports anything team. Coordinated was not an adjective used to describe me.

As an adult, I wasn’t much better. I would spend endless hours in front of the computer, both at work and home. I had a wall of soda cans on my desk at work (sound familiar?) and if my dinner didn’t come in a cardboard box, I was likely to be hungry that day.

But in recent years, I’ve started focusing on my health more. As a result, I feel more energized, awake and ready to tackle the day. I’m rarely sick and I generally feel more productive.

I’ve seen the results in my career as well, advancing to higher levels of pay, title and responsibility over the past few years. Some of this success can be attributed to all the work I’ve put in over the past 20 years, but I think my focus on my health has contributed quite a bit as well.

So how can you get in on this miracle productivity tip? I have three suggestions.

Can the Soda

As I mentioned before, I had a wall of soda cans on my desk at work. Not only did I drink several cans a day, I was apparently too lazy to get up and recycle them! I was addicted to the caffeine and sugar rush. It didn’t hurt that my employer provided for free!

But I wasn’t doing myself any favors. As a study in the journal Neuroscience discovered, a diet high in sugar (soda is mostly sugar) interferes with many neurological functions, including the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Lower levels of BDNF cause reduced cognitive functions such as learning and memory formation.

Not only that, but soda (and coffee, for that matter) actually dehydrates you. Our bodies are mostly water and need lots of it each day to keep everything running smoothly.

I finally kicked my soda habit. I still get a soda from time to time, but mostly I drink water these days. I’m also eating healthier, adding more greens, vegetables and fruits to my diet and removing processed foods and sugars. As a result, I have energy throughout the day. Rarely do I have a day where I crash hard and need something to pick me back up.

There’s research to back this up. One study showed that workers who ate healthy all day long were 25% more likely to have higher job performance.

Look at what you are eating and drinking during the day. Is it providing you the nutrition and energy to be your best? Or is it draining you, making it harder to be productive during the day?

Move It

The second thing you can do to improve your productivity is to exercise regularly. Exercise is one of those magic things that seems to solve just about every ill. Feeling unmotivated or down in the dumps?  Exercise! Having trouble sleeping? Exercise! Feeling sad, tired, or angry? Exercise!

A lot of research has been done on the benefits of exercise. A variety of studies have found that exercise improves productivity, reduces stress, makes people happier and improves the function of the brain, in addition to the benefits to the body.

Today, I get up every morning and do a workout, whether I feel like it or not. I’ve made it a habit, a part of my morning routine. It may not always be a hard workout, but I do something. When I get started, I’m usually sleepy and want nothing more than to go back to bed, but by the time I’m done, I have that exercise high and I’m ready to face the day with newfound energy.

This goes beyond a dedicated time to exercise. Take breaks from your work about once an hour. Lock your screen and get up from your chair. Go for a walk around the building, inside or out. Do something to get away from your desk and move. I think you’ll find that you’ll return having solved that difficult problem. At the very least, you’ll be refreshed and ready to tackle that challenge with new energy.

Sleep

We spend a third of our life asleep. Research has been hard pressed to understand why we sleep, but one thing is certain, if you don’t get enough sleep, your health and productivity suffers. Most people are not getting enough sleep each night.

How many times have you pulled an all-night hack-a-thon, banging out code into the wee hours of the morning? When you got back to the code the next morning, how much did you need to rewrite? If you’re like I was, probably most of it. According to the Harvard Medical School,

In addition to these normal fluctuations, not getting enough sleep—whether for just one night or over the course of weeks to months—has a significant effect on our ability to function. Sleep deprivation negatively impacts our mood, our ability to focus, and our ability to access higher-level cognitive functions. The combination of these factors is what we generally refer to as mental performance. In the laboratory, researchers use scientific studies to determine just how significantly varying levels of sleep disturbance impact various types of mental performance.

Our brain needs a good nights sleep to process and make sense of all that we learned during the day. Often, a problem I’ve been stewing on all day will suddenly  resolve itself the next morning after my subconscious has had time to work on it while I was sleeping.

How much sleep is enough? Conventional wisdom says that we need about 8 hours of sleep each night. That’s about the minimum for me, but the truth is that there’s no hard and fast number. If you find yourself feeling sleepy during the day, or have difficulty getting up in the morning when the alarm goes off, you’re probably not getting enough.

Try adding an extra 30-60 minutes of sleep each night for a week or two and see how you feel. Make sure that the sleep you are getting is quality sleep. Turn off your screens about an hour before you go to bed, keep the room cool and dark and you’ll sleep better and fall asleep more easily.

Incremental Change

You probably have heard this advice before. Eat healthy, exercise, take breaks, get proper rest. But as Brendon Buchard says, “Common sense is not always common practice.”

If you’ve been neglecting your health, it may seem overwhelming to think about changing all these things at once. But you already know how to break down problems into smaller, solvable chunks. Decomposing problems is the foundation of software engineering and is also at the heart of just about any agile development process.

Take one thing, work on that and iterate from there. You could decide to cut back on sodas or start ordering salad more often. Perhaps you go for a walk at lunch or go to bed 30 minutes earlier for a week. At the end of each iteration, whether it’s a week or a month, celebrate your success and then work on the next thing.

Before you know it, you’ll have more energy, feel better and find that you’re more productive in everything that you do.

As Jim Rohn said, “Take care of your body, It’s the only place you have to live.”

Question****: What health habits do you think contribute the most to your productivity?