Tag: productivity

Wind Downs and Ramp Ups

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Left to my own devices, my short term memory is a sieve. Without routine, structure, and a trusted system, I’d probably end up in a ditch somewhere wondering why my calendar looked empty while my Slack was on fire.

What saves me isn’t a clever productivity hack or the latest app. It’s the rituals I repeat every day at the edges of work. How I start and how I finish. Those bookends keep me sane.

Why Edges Matter

Cal Newport once wrote about his “work shutdown ritual,” where he ends each day by deliberately closing the loop on everything and saying out loud: schedule shutdown, complete. The phrase doesn’t matter so much as what it represents. It’s a moment of finality, a way to tell your brain the day is over.

That resonated with me. If I don’t start the day intentionally, the day runs me. If I don’t end it cleanly, I keep gnawing on unfinished tasks long after I’ve shut my laptop. My routines are the boundaries that give me the space for deep work in the middle. So, I’ve created a way to help me stay on track with my busy workweeks as an engineering manager.

My Ramp Up

Most mornings begin the same way. Coffee, a deep breath, and about half an hour of getting my bearings. Things is the first stop. Everything I need to remember lives there, from big projects to tiny half-formed reminders. If something enters my head, it goes in the system. No exceptions. After reading Getting Things Done a few decades ago, the idea of a trusted system has always resonated with me, and Things hits the sweet spot of beauty, power and availability for me.

I spend those morning minutes reviewing what’s in front of me, shuffling things around, and deciding on the one to three tasks that matter most that day. That’s the trick. Not ten, not a sprawling list of hopes and dreams. Just the handful of things that will make the day feel like progress if I get them done. I’ll carve out space on my calendar to actually do them, which keeps me from just living in meetings and email. Honestly, there are some days where I’m bursting at the seams with upcoming meetings that I might only have 1 to-do item on the list. The key is about being realistic with yourself so the list remains important.

By the time I’m finished, I know what matters and I can trust that everything else has been captured for later. That trust is what clears my head enough to focus.

My Wind Down

The other side of the day looks similar in spirit, if not in details. I give myself the last thirty minutes to put everything in order. I’ll glance at my remaining tasks and either finish them, move them, or add enough notes so I know where to pick up tomorrow. I’ll close the browser tabs that have multiplied during the day, scan through email and Slack, and leave things in a state where nothing feels half-open. If I close a browser tab that has something key in it, I’ll capture it as a to-do item for the next morning.

I’ve skipped this routine before, and I always pay for it. Instead of resting, I’ll be at dinner remembering some stray Slack message I didn’t respond to, or lying in bed trying to reconstruct what I forgot to capture. My personal belief is simple: when I’m working, I give everything I’ve got. When I’m done, I want to actually enjoy my time off. This system is what makes that possible.

The Payoff

The middle of the day is always messy. That’s just the nature of work, especially knowledge work where you’re responsible for tons of projects and people. But these routines give me bookends I can rely on. A calm, deliberate start and a clean, decisive stop. They keep stress low, protect my focus, and let me walk away confident that I’ve done what matters.

Asynchronous Communication: The Real Reason Remote Workers Are More Productive

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From The Doist blog:

The trend toward near-constant communication means that the average knowledge worker must organize their workday around multiple meetings, with the time in between spent doing their work half-distractedly with one eye on email and Slack.

I love working remotely because I get to spend more time with family, avoid nasty commute times, get more rest and in a non-pandemic world, spend more time with friends. In addition, I can optimize my day around the rest of my life for the most part to run errands or do things around the house when it makes the most sense to do so.

What I don’t love is being on video calls from 8-5 every day. It leaves no room for any meaningful work outside of business hours, which slowly robs myself and others of their newly-gained additional free time. I think most companies are still trying to recreate all of the ceremonies, processes and expectations of the physical office. What this fails to do is take advantage of the massive productivity gains teams can get from working more asynchronously. If trust levels are high and you work in an environment that’s focused more on results than punching the clock, teams can really crank through work and still maintain a high level of communication.

I recently heard a really interesting episode of Sam Harris’ podcast where he spoke with the founder of Automattic about their history as remote first. There’s a lot of interesting tidbits in there about how companies transition from first trying to replicate their office environment and eventually move towards “enlightenment” – where almost all communication is async and open.

The main tips are to lean into note-taking when you are in meetings to ensure high levels of alignment, handle what you can in slack or email and in higher quality communication than standups in Zoom. On the teams that I work with that have leaned into these practices, I’ve found way more time to focus on making my team better instead of running on the meeting treadmill.

On Forming Habits with Tech’s Help

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I was recently listening to the Ezra Klein Show and the app Way of Life was mentioned during a conversation about habit building. I have a handful of things I’m always trying to get better at doing (or not doing), so I figured I’d give it a shot.

In short, you pick some activities that you think are good and bad for you and keep track of how you’re doing. Personally, I’m a very big believer in the idea of The Quantified Self: so using an app like this means when I track stats on my activities, I tend to do a much better job of following through.

A few of the things I added were:

  • No soda
  • Fewer than 2 cups of coffee per day
  • Run every day
  • Avoid afternoon snack
  • Avoid evening snack
  • Floss daily
  • No video games at night
  • Less than 20 minutes per day on social media
  • Read a book for an hour

After a month, the things I struggle the most with are the snacking. The ones I thought I’d struggle with the most but haven’t are the last two. I moved my social apps off of my home screen, turned off notifications, and replaced them with the Kindle app for iOS. I’ve been plowing through books when commuting and haven’t really had a ton of FOMO from avoiding social media. Every time I do check in, I notice that I missed nothing. I do feel a little less plugged in with what some of my friends are up to but that’s about it.

This isn’t anything even close to an “I am quitting social media” post – I love Twitter and Instagram (and Facebook is OK I suppose), but more on how quickly habits can change if you try to prioritize healthier things over the impulse to check in on social media during any down time you may have. If you’re like me, the power of “checking off all of your goals for the day” in a stupid app somehow actually keeps me on track with those goals & Way of Life is a huge help.

How to destory Programmer Productivity

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George Stocker, on How to destroy Programmer Productivity:

Ultimately, each of us controls what makes us unproductive. I suck at peaceful confrontation. I either come of too strongly, or I sit there and let the other person walk all over me. I’m really not good at it at all. As such, I don’t have any good advice for handling the external forces that contribute to not being productive, but I do know this: Whatever I can control, I should control.

This is a constant struggle for any developer – not only the external forces in an office that cause tons of issues, but the personal preferences around how software is set up. Being a morning person, I try to get into the office early and that gets me a long way. But I’m still a mere mortal, so I have to do everything in my power to reduce other distractions.

Keeping my dock hidden on my Mac alone is such a huge boon to my productivity – having an office and the ability to blast music all day goes a long way as well. I’m also super careful about what apps are on my home screen – I keep all social media on the second screen – and which apps can actually send push notifications.