There are few things that I think I can never survive without as a developer. Surely you will need all the technical stuffs for your work. However a lot of things seem not relate to IT at all but so essential. These are my personal choice only. What about you?

Energy drink + Coffee

Those drinks give you a lot of energy, keep you stay awake even for a few days. It’s especially good choice when you’re under projects with tide deadline. Don’t drink too much when you don’t need to though ‘cos it will make you immunize with caffeine.
Note: Even though they’re good to increase your metal concentration at a short term, they actually damage your health and special your heart. So don’t over use them.

Paracetamol

Looking at the computer screens for a long time is bad enough. We also have to highly concentrate and work under heavily pressure. Our brain sometime just can’t handle it. So headache is certain. I always have some paracetamol with me. It eases my head from the pain. However, you will still to take a break ask paracetamol only easy the pain not fixing it. Take a walk around, get some fresh air before you go back to your work.

MP3 Player + Headphone

When you’re working, sometime you hear some strange noise or over hear some conversation. And you start thinking, what is that noise or what are they talking about… You lost your concentrate in your work. Listening to music and working at the same time help you avoid that. Music blocks away random noise which could disturb you and keep your mind only in your current work. Under a certain state of concentration, I sometime forget about the music in my ear.

Comfortable computer chair

I have to sit on the chair at least 8 hours a day at work and 3 more hours at home. A bad chair could damage your back. The uncomfortable also make you harder to concentrate on your work. So for your own health and your productivity, get a decent chair. As I used laptop a lot at home, I have a massage chair with a foot rest, just amazing.

Utilities CDs

Whatever you are, developers, designers… non-technies will always assume you know how to fix computers because you work with computers. And so, if your friends’ computers are broken down, they will find you, Mr know-everything-about-computer. You could nicely reject them, but if you couldn’t you should prepare yourself some tools to help you fix them quickly. Keep a copy of TeamViewer. You could fix their computer without away of your computers. You will also need some free antivirus, anti spyware, disk scan and some portable app.
Get a Hiren Boot CD, they have a lot of useful utilities to examine and fix the system.

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