Why and How I’m Organised
Fundamentals
What you work on, who you work with, and how you work, are more important than how hard you work. This becomes more true the more leverage (due to things like the internet, code, AI) you have.
You’ll have seen how one component of this is how you work: how efficient (doing things quickly) and effective (doing the right things) you are.
Two types of productivity gains
The effects of how you work impact the org in two ways. Firstly is your own productivity. If you are losing track of what you’re doing, if you are repeating work, if you are spending all your time explaining what you’re doing, then you’re wasting time. You’re not efficient because it takes more time than is necessary to complete tasks. And you’re not effective because you lose track of the bigger picture and work on the wrong things.
But then also you’re eroding the productivity of the whole org. Because: others must spend more time understanding what you’re doing and why. Superfluous time. And they also have a muddier picture of what’s happening in the org as a whole.
Obvious, right?
WORM
Also important and also kind of fundamental (so should maybe have been up there in that section. Oops):
Write once, read many times. WORM.
I.e. as much information as possible in a business should be (internally, obviously) PUBLIC. In Jira, in Confluence, in Notion, in Google Drive, in Sharepoint, in GitHub.
Because then when someone needs information, they are spending only one person’s time obtaining it, by reading, rather than two people’s time, by asking. Documentation also offers better information (providing it is up to date), can be iterated on and improved, won’t leave when someone gets a new job, etc.
This reduces the number of unplanned task interruptions at the org.
Blocks of time
Now various disjoint practical stuff, starting with blocks of time.
Reminder: main reason to WORM: drive the number of task interruptions towards 0.
But for this to be an important metric, we need to first have blocks of time that can be potentially interrupted. In which we can do things that if you write a book about you’ll probably land #1 in the business section of Waterstones (deep work, flow state, etc.) that all essentially describe the same thing: doing your job. Like the thing you were actually hired to do.
There are multiple ways to do this, of course. Block mornings/evenings. Block Wednesdays. Sandwich focus days. However you do it, you must create blocks of time to do focused work.
Tasks
Tasks/work/TODOs need to be recorded in two different ways.
Obviously, we need a way to track the real meat - what we are working on, updates, what’s coming up, etc. so that people can know what we’re doing (WORM).
Note this has secondary benefits. Auditing, tracking time spent on certain types of tasks, automatic reporting, helping meetings run smoothly, and more.
We also need some type of meta/abstract task tracker. There needs to be a separation between what others might want to know, and what they absolutely do not. Example: I might check emails in batch at a certain time of day and need to note/remind myself of that. Example: I might need to remember to speak to my manager about my development plan.
A meta task manager might look something like:
- See task manager
- Speak to John about thing
- Review Sarah quarterly objectives
- Quick look at this random thing
- Review PRs
There is some ambiguity and overlap, but I hope you understand me.
Notes
Write everything you didn’t know or find interesting down.
Most of it won’t leave your notes, but writing it down helps your concentration and retention.
It also gives you the option to use the details to create a task/work, or even to include the information in existing documentation.
Meetings
Short. Focused. Agenda. Batched. Objectives. Resulting actions. Low-energy times. Scheduled. Cancellable. Limited.
Read the docs
Self-explanatory. You can’t read if there is no material to read, you have to ask/interrupt, instead.
Internal documentation is actually a lot easier than people think to create and maintain. Simply write a short [what and why and how] when something new and relevant for other people happens. Then others update the page when they go to use/read it. Done.
Questions
Sure, after all this, you may still need to interrupt and ask.
If you do that, the question better be good. Good:
1) You’ve searched/read the internal material 2) You’ve searched/read the public material 3) You’ve tried some things/experiments already 4) You have an idea/a proposal of what to do 5) All the above (with context) is included in your question 6) The question is posted publicly