How I Stay Productive as a Solo Developer

Working alone is great until you realize nobody is going to tell you what to do next. No standup. No sprint board someone else filled in. No manager pinging you on Slack asking for an update. It's just you, your editor, and a list of things that somehow keeps growing. I've been working solo on projects for a while now, and I won't pretend I have it all figured out. But I've found a few things that consistently help me stay on track without burning out or staring at my screen doing nothing for three hours. I write down what I'm going to do before I open my editor This sounds basic but it changed everything for me. Before I even touch code, I open a note and write down 2 or 3 things I want to finish today. Not a backlog. Not a Jira board. Just a few lines. Something like: Fix the login redirect bug Add the settings page layout Write tests for the API endpoint That's it. When I don't do this, I end up jumping between tasks, half-finishing things, and feeling like I did nothing at the end