I was reviewing some notes from 1-1 meetings that me and my manager Dave used to have, and I thought I'd summarize a bunch of the repeated talking points we've had over the years. Here's some of what I've learned about being a competent professional. Identify and focus on your top priorities – because if you don't, wtf are you doing?
Is the top priority the top priority? What's the single most important thing you need to be doing? If you don't have an answer to this, you should drop everything and figure out what the answer is. Having an answer here forces clarity and focus. Not having an answer is dangerous – it guarantees that you'll be working on unimportant things and wasting your precious time. There will always be an endless stream of things to do. It'll be tempting to do whatever is easiest, or most fun, or most familiar. But this is a trap that will screw you over in the long run. It's better to make 5-10% progress on the most important thing than to finish lots of tasks that don't actually move the