Kevin Hoyt krhoyt

If there is one "soft" skill that has served me the best during my two decades in Information Technology, it has to be time management. There are many approaches to time management. Entire systems have evolved to help. One of these is Getting Things Done, or GTD, based on the book of the same name by author, David Allen.

You can get as involved in GTD as you want. This is not that kind of post. This is a post about the decision making process at the core of GTD that you can use right now, without changing a single thing about how you work. This is GTD distilled down to the very core - do it, defer it, delegate it, drop it.

Primer

Among the core concepts in GTD is not keeping information in your head. Keeping information in your head represents a cognitive load that slows you down, and will

We will have a weekly 1:1. I will never cancel this meeting, but you can cancel it whenever you like. It is your time.
Our 1:1 agenda will be in the meeting invite so we remember important topics. You are always free to use the time for whatever is on your mind.
When I schedule a meeting with you, I will always say when I schedule it what it is meant to be about. I will not schedule meetings without an agenda.
When I drop into your DM’s, I will always say “hi and why.” No suspense, no small talk while you are wondering what I want.
News or announcements that significantly impact you, your work, or your team will come from me directly in a 1:1, not revealed in a big meeting.
You will get feedback from me when it is fresh. There will be no feedback in your performance review that you are hearing for the first time.
I trust you to manage your own time. You do not need to clear with me in advance your time AFK or OOO.
Your work gets done your way. My focus is on outcomes, not output. O

What did you do last week? Not down to the minute, but what were the high-level themes of the work you did last week? This is not a trick question, and should be relatively easy to answer. Got it? Cool! Now, what did you do 24 weeks ago (six months)? Is that a little harder to answer? A lot harder? Okay, well, here comes the annual review; are you ready? Or are you going to spend countless hours digging through material to try and justify your existence to the business?

Ug! This is all such a drag. All I really want to do is code/write/anything else!

One of the many techniques I use to solve this problem is what I call the "Three P" weekly status report. Why "Three P"? Because there are three parts to it: progress, priorities, and problems.

Progress: Details about the work you completed over the last week
Priorities: Work you intend to accomplish in the week ahead
Problems: Issues that are slowing you down or preventing progress

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