Most developers I knew so far have some common habits. Some good, some bad but there are many habits that I see a lot of developers should avoid or at least try to reduce to have better health and performance in their work.

Not having enough sleep

We have all heard that developers are usually night owl people who can code the whole night and consume tons of coffee to be able to state awake. Sleeping has a strong impact on both learning and memory. Every lack of sleep at night can reduce our focus and impact our performance but also for a long time can cause a lot of brain problems like Alzheimer. Having a good night’s sleep can reduce stress, better concentrate, and boost your ideas on solving problems skills. So every time thinking about state up late at night, think again about all the impact on your brain and performance on next day. Taking a deep sleep for 7–8 hours helps a lot with mental health and brain which is essential for work requiring thinking like programming.

Not taking any exercise

One more bad habit that can impact developer health is lack of exercise. With a job that requires us to sit more than 8 hours a day, it is more than important to have one small 15 minutes physical activity on your day which improves your brain health and reduces the risk of many diseases.

Spend too much time on the monitor

We as a developer working with keyboards, monitors, and mouse on every day regarding at home or office. A normal developer is likely to look at his screen for more than 8 hours a day and most developers I knew have problems with their eyes. Human eyes are not evolved to stare at a blue screen for that amount of time. A few changes in working with a monitor can help prevent the problem with your eyes:

• Make sure your screen away 16–30 inches from your eyes.
• Follow the 20/20/20 rule: every 20 minutes look at some other object far 20 feet for 20 seconds.
• Use artificial tears every time you feel your eyes dry.
• Make sure your work room has enough light.
• Using a high-resolution monitor.

Spend too much time solving one problem

A lot of time I see my colleagues trying to solve one difficult problem by himself that take days to finished it and the final solution not pretty ideal or best for the problem. It is ok and normal to have a difficult task that require a lot of man power to solve it. But if you take too much on the problem that over your skill, try some difference approaches:

• Split the problem into small tasks that can easier to solve: It’s likely that your problem is too big to solve on one take, try to split it smaller.
• Ask for help from other developers: If you feel like the task is too much to solve by yourself, it’s ok to asking for help.
• Take a small break if you got stuck on the problem: A small break can help refresh your mind for more idea to the problem.

Programming is fun and full of interesting jobs but it goes with some bad habits that we should be aware of and prevent. Avoid these and we can make sure our lifestyle is happier and keep our performance on the go.

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