[gee_totes]

Is this question about programming more efficiently or managing your workload more efficiently?

I would definitely suggest working on one thing at a time. If you have multiple projects, just timebox them. 3 hrs working on project A, 3hrs working on project B (or 1 day working on project A, 1 day working on project B, etc).

[patrickocoffeyo]

It's really a question about improving my workflow and improving my programming habits, in an effort to product quality code quickly.

Sometimes I'll get pulled onto different tasks abruptly and I don't really have a choice of when I get to switch, it usually happens only four or five times a day, so it's not a huge problem but it does interrupt the blocks of time I try to spend on other larger projects. I'm just wondering if there's any way to make the process of switching between projects easier?

[gee_totes]

I would suggest taking copius notes and using writing documentation to get over the switch.

For example, when I get started on a project, I normally sit down at my computer and surf the internet for maybe 20 minutes and play around in the command line. This "down-time" helps me get into the flow of things. Plus I normally try to avoid tight-deadlines so I don't really care if I spend 20 minutes dinking around on Hacker News.

If you have a similar work-pattern, maybe those 20 minutes could be spent instead reviewing a README.md or working on a Trello board, or adding new links to an internal wiki you've set up for the project.

I've found that touching the documentation that I've created really helps me snap back into a project since I can see exactly where I left off. And if I don't know what to do, I work on planning out the project.

Also, if all of a sudden I have a great idea of what to do, I'll spend half and hour or so making files and directories and writing the code entirely in comments. Then, when I come back to the project, it's only a matter of replacing the comments with real code.