My 7 Essential Productivity Hacks

Starting - working on it and staying focused until you have made some progress and/or until burn out. Upon burn out, going for a walk, (or to the washroom) but continuing thinking on the problem while away from it helped on finding alternate solutions to a problem. Starting was by far was the most essential productivity hack.
Working when my energy levels were highest – This was often after a good night’s sleep i.e. about 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep or after a short 10-15 min nap during the day.
Setting aside long stretches of uninterrupted time – With 3-4 hours of uninterrupted, high energy time it was easy to cross a milestone in reading a book, adding a new feature, writing a report, reviewing code.
Working when distractions were fewest – This was often in early morning when others were fast asleep. I rarely got anything significant done during the day.
Minimizing the remaining distractions – Nothing worked like turning off the modem. Clearly this required keeping reference materials offline (See Zeal). 3M ear plugs/ear muffs were useful to reduce the remaining volume of noise.
Having a list of projects/action items handy at all times – Picking up a task that was most urgent but put off for long, helped most. Working on less urgent items was hard to justify and hard to stay focused on. The urgency of a task was a strong motivation for working on it and progress on an urgent yet neglected task was a great stress buster.
Reward – Tying progress on a task to a short break with a cup of tea helped. This also helped in forming good habits such as exercising the first thing in the morning even before the first cup of tea.