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RailsConf 2019 - Coding with an Organized Mind by Jason Swett
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Many developers fail to reach their productivity not due to lack of technical ability but for lack of mental organization and discipline. It's extremely helpful to always hold in one's mind the answer to the question: "What exactly am I trying to achieve at this particular moment?" It may sound like a no-brainer. However, many developers often can't answer this question. Here's how you can make sure that you always can.

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In his talk at RailsConf 2019 titled *Coding with an Organized Mind*, Jason Swett discusses the importance of mental organization in programming, arguing that many developers fail to achieve high productivity not because they lack technical skills, but due to disorganization. He contrasts the chaos associated with a disorganized mindset to the flow state achieved when coding is approached systematically.

Swett outlines three key phases to organizing work:

- **Defining Work**: He emphasizes the importance of breaking projects into smaller tasks, utilizing methods such as user stories and usability testing to ensure that designs are sensible before development begins. By prototyping designs on paper and testing them with end-users, designers can avoid common pitfalls and misunderstandings that may arise later in the development cycle.
 
- **Setting Up Work**: The necessity of maintaining clear to-do lists is highlighted. These lists should stem from user stories committed to in sprints, and include both personal and work-related tasks to ensure that developers know what they need to accomplish daily. The author encourages starting with broad objectives and drilling down to granular tasks to enhance clarity and focus.

- **Carrying Out Work**: Swett advocates for focused work sessions, atomic commits, small short-lived branches, and small frequent deployments. By reducing distractions (like closing email or Slack), developers can enhance focus, while atomic commits simplify rollbacks and make tracking changes easier. Small, short-lived branches coupled with feature flags allow incomplete features to be deployed without impacting users. He concludes that frequent deployments reduce complexity, making it easier to maintain development and production environments in close alignment.

The concluding takeaways include:
 - The necessity of usability testing to create coherent designs, 
 - The importance of precise user stories for project clarity, 
 - The requirement of maintaining an unambiguous to-do list, 
 - The benefits of working with small units to ensure manageability and efficiency.

For more resources and insights, Swett invites viewers to visit his website, *code with Jason*, and engage with him for questions post-presentation.

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