Here is a sample timeline of my typical day:
Respond to Urgent Requests
I start the day be responding to urgent requests. I check slack and e-mail and only respond if the request is urgent or fast to respond to. The less I can divide my attention the more effective I can be at completing the Daily Plan.
Make a Daily Plan
The Daily plan is three items. The first item is the highest priority.
Here is a sample Daily Plan written in the margin of a work notebook:
Plan achievable tasks. It is better to err towards small achievable tasks, than have big tasks that go unfinished. The more you finish the Daily Plan, the more you will trust yourself to stick to your Daily Plan.
For big tasks, I set daily tasks to spend time. E.g. if X is a task that will take several days, my daily task will be "Spend 1 hour on X" rather than "Do X".
Estimate to complete the Daily Plan with half of the time available in the day. E.g. if you are in meetings for 2 hours, you have 6 hours of working time. Estimate to spend 3 hours on the Daily Plan. This padding accounts for unexpected interruptions. If the Daily Plan is finished early, work on other backlog items.
Review Input Streams
At the end of the day, I review a checklist of input streams. Streams are reviewed in order of urgency:
- Slack. Respond to all messages.
- Github. Review quick low complexity code reviews.
- Calendar. Accept/decline/reschedule all invites for the next day.
- E-mail. Respond/archive/delete/label all e-mails. Non-urgent e-mails requiring a response are often labeled with "Later".
- TODO list.
- Jira.
After reviewing the checklist, I have the state in my head of all pending items. Make the Daily Plan for the next day.
Here is a sample checklist to end the day, with the next day's Daily Plan:
Top comments (2)
This is a great way of organising your day!
thanks for sharing your way of tickle things on daily basis