There have been times where I’ve considered pulling code down from the WordPress plugin repository or from GitHub because the way in which I write my code now differs from how I wrote my code when I was working on those projects.

And surely you know what I’m talking about: It’s not that the plugins don’t work and it’s not that they necessarily cause problems for anyone, but the open source nature of what they don’t necessarily represent what we’re capable of doing now or how we’re capable of doing it now.

Does that make sense?

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Earlier this week, I wrote a post about how we use the term “WordPress Admin,” how I suspect that we’re using it incorrectly, and I discussed the significance and importance of consistency of terminology when working with customers and clients.

The post generated far more discussion than I would have expected, which is a good thing, but one particular comment struck a chord with me:

Tom,

I sent a Jr. level WP developer through your TutsPlus course on plugin development. You use the word “Admin” more times than I could count! You even use it for file names, etc.

What’s up with that, brother? I respect you so I had to chime in with that lil’ observation.

I love comments like this because not only does it hold us accountable to our own actions, but it also gives us an opportunity to show that throughout the course of whatever it is that we’re doing now may not what we’re doing tomorrow.

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I think one of the more popular discussions that comes up among developers (and designers) from time-time is how to be productive as possible. Personally, I’d go as to far as to say that it gets harder and harder each year (let alone each, say, quarter).

By that, I mean we try to use tools such as IRC, Skype, and Slack to mitigate the amount of email that we have, but they also require that we divide our time between focusing on our tasks at hand and then mulitasking between however many other applications are open (such as Twitter, Facebook, email, and whatever else).

I’m not knocking this at all! It just doesn’t work very well for me. Anyway, just as others like to share their tips for how to be productive, I thought I’d share the ways in which I try to achieve developer productivity (because that in and of itself is a challenge enough) rather than, say, general productivity.

So here are a few things that I do – and I’m curious to hear yours, as well.

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