How do some people get so much more done than others? How do I streamline my tasks to avoid lengthy waiting times for stakeholder feedback? How do I set myself up to hit the ground running on a Monday and feel like I’ve accomplished what was most important at the end of the week? The key is prioritising, unpacking priorities into their different elements, and managing your time effectively. Here’s how I go about that.
Weekly Planning
Whenever I start looking at an upcoming week, I first do a quick retro for myself. For that, I’ve set up a custom keyword shortcut that prompts me to map out where things are at:
Week Roundup_AnneHow did last week go?What is currently on the to-do list? (check Asana + calendar)What are the critical outcomes for this week?How are they helping with the goals (long-term, this quarter, this week)?What does winning look like?
What are the principles to win this week?What is likely to break this week? What can I put in place so it doesn't?What haven’t I told the team?
This braindump of thoughts really helps me to check myself on my initial prioritisation and force myself to explicitly drop anything that isn’t crucial.
Now that I’ve done the foundational thinking, I’m ready to put together my plan for the week. I loosely try to follow these steps:
From the above braindump: Identify a maximum of 3 clear “rocks” of work in progress that I commit to ship this week
What will make the biggest impact right now?/ What will “kill us” fastest?
What am I explicitly letting burn?
Unpack each rock into its subtasks
Identify each rock’s critical path
What is likely going to be a blocker? Can I pre-empt that by giving stakeholders a heads-up or putting any other actions in place?
Check the calendar to identify:
What meetings/time-slots are not in line with the priorities I’ve identified above
Can I move them?
Are they small enough not to distract me?
Do I have enough open time for each subtask on my list?
Create time blocks in your calendar for each step of the path
As a team lead, I generally try to be conscious that a good chunk of my time will need to be used on feedback and workshops with my team members - this affects how much time I have to work on other shippables.