I am not looking for ways to trick the brain reward system but on how to measure and percieve developer productivity in the long run. The reason is that currently I am dedicating some time in trying to bootstrap a project.
2. Exercise and eat right.
3. Set goals. People with goals vastly outperform those without.
4. Track your progress. This will involve determining the right metrics. "What gets measured gets done."
5. Look for more efficient ways to do things.
6. Read the book "The 7 habits of highly effective people."
7. Learn some time management techniques.
8. Read up on how to plan things backwards: Start with where you want to be and figure out the step before that and the step before that, etc. Otherwise, you may be "climbing a ladder leaned against the wrong wall."
https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
It also has a companion book.(Book came first anyway). It's well researched and has many tricks on boosting productivity e.g Pomodoro technique.
P.S. See also Max's earlier blog post Measuring Developer Productivity: http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/measuring-developer-produ...
Wait, there are people who specialize in increasing the productivity of engineers? How does one find, assess, and hire someone like this to improve your personal productivity?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007NZU848/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
The biggest insight is that it's far more important to work on big, important problems.