Time By Ping

timebyping

Last year, I started ' ' and, surprisingly, the approach stuck with me. I had tried different productivity methods/'hacks' before that never made much of an impact. This one did. timeboxing I had to modify it a bit to suit my needs. This is what I do: Monthly Goals Though timeboxing is a daily exercise, I start by setting monthly goals. I tend to use a simple format for those: Three categories (e.g. work, health, etc.) Up to three goals per category (e.g. conduct X interviews, go to the gym 3x/week, etc.). Daily Timebox In the morning, I use a paper notepad and write the following: . I re-write them every day. This ensures I keep a close eye on them and is a reminder to tie most (if not all) of my daily tasks to my monthly goals). My monthly goals . These tasks should be achievable but take work. These should absolutely point to my monthly goals. My three main tasks for the day . I break my notepad by hour from 6 am to 8 pm. My agenda for the day . Each box is 30-120min long. I decide where those tasks start and end (i.e. when I'm supposed to have them done). My boxes for each task Work Throughout the day, I follow my agenda. If something comes up and I must move a task, I cross it out and re-draw a box in a column next to it. It helps me review my days later and spot where I'm making planning mistakes. It sort of looks like this: Review I review my day in the evening before bed. I tick each task achieved. Then I start again. This approach has helped me a lot this past year. Its main benefits to me have been: Keeping a close eye on my daily activities vs. what I want to achieve long term. It's so easy as a PM to 'do work' and fill your day without progressing towards your long-term goal. Forced start & end times. I'm both a procrastinator and a perfectionist -- the perfect combo. This approach forces me to start and to finish. Truly planning my day (without cheating). I use paper because I can't go back and change my plan, which is easy to do when using an app or a calendar. I need to think about what I'll do which forces me to stay focused and realistic. really If you would be interested in a more granular breakdown of my methodology, I wrote my detailed . step-by-step process for timeboxing

Timeboxing: How I Plan My Day (as a Product Manager)

The Five Pillars of Untouchable Excellence: The Secret Weapon Most Entrepreneurs Neglect

Hey everyone! Are you managing multiple jobs or projects simultaneously? I don’t know about you, but it was super stressful for me when I was in that situation the first time. Managing multiple jobs simultaneously requires a high level of organization, time management, and prioritization skills. Successfully juggling these responsibilities also depends on leveraging the right tools to keep track of tasks, deadlines, and communications efficiently. Been there, done that. Here are 6 Strategies and Tools that I found helpful if you need to manage multiple jobs 6 Strategies to Manage Multiple Jobs 1. Clarify what you need to do Define specific work for each job to prevent going around without knowing what has to be delivered. 2. Communicate / Align Openly To do the first point well, you need to be transparent with your employers about your commitments (especially if you are working on multiple projects for him/her). If you are working freelance, then you need to make sure you know the deliverables and deadlines well for each job. 3. Prioritize Tasks Identify which tasks are most urgent or important each day or week. This helps in allocating your time and energy where they are most needed. The easy and impactful way to do this is by using The Eisenhower Matrix. 4. Keep Track Of Your Schedule After prioritizing tasks, diligent tracking ensures nothing falls through the cracks and deadlines are met. To manage time for these jobs effectively, I’ve found the timeboxing method, calendar, and reminders super helpful. 5. Work Smart Easier said than done 🙂 Finding ways to maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality is key. For me, the best way I found is: (1) planning exhaustively first, reading best practices, aligning with managers, then (2) doing deep work with the support of helpful tools. 6. Take Care of Yourself Managing multiple jobs can be stressful and exhausting. Ensure you’re getting enough rest, eating well, and taking breaks to sustain your productivity and well-being. 6 Tools to Manage Multiple Jobs 1. Digital Calendars (Google Calendar) I’ve used this to block time for each job, including specific tasks and deadlines. I also block my deep work time to get things done without distraction. 2. Task Management Tools I use a notebook for simple todolist 🙂 but for project management, I use Google Sheets most of the time. It’s a versatile and powerful tool for me. Because it’s basic, I don’t get into the trap of prettifying instead of working. 3. Time Tracking Tools I opt for simplicity, so I use the timer clock on my computer. I set the countdown time based on each task length I decided. 4. AIs I use ChatGPT and Gemini to quickly research new knowledge/definitions. They have been really helpful. Just need to remember to double-check the sources. 5. Note-Taking Apps I used to use paper and Google Docs. But now I’m switching to Saner.ai because I can easily capture information while I’m researching, search notes I saved months ago, and use many AIs 🙂 It’s the tool we are building, so it fits my needs nicely. 6. Communication Tools (Slack) I predominantly use Slack. One tip I’ve found is that turning on “deep work mode” and disabling notifications when needed significantly boosts productivity. This is because notifications from multiple projects are distracting sometimes. So there you have it—my tried-and-tested methods to manage multiple jobs and projects simultaneously. I hope you find these tips helpful in your own multitasking endeavors! 🚀 Hey everyone! Are you managing multiple jobs or projects simultaneously? I don’t know about you, but it was super stressful for me when I was in that situation the first time. Managing multiple jobs simultaneously requires a high level of organization, time management, and prioritization skills. Successfully juggling these responsibilities also depends on leveraging the right tools to keep track of tasks, deadlines, and communications efficiently. Been there, done that. Here are 6 Strategies and Tools that I found helpful if you need to manage multiple jobs 6 Strategies to Manage Multiple Jobs 1. Clarify what you need to do Define specific work for each job to prevent going around without knowing what has to be delivered. 2. Communicate / Align Openly To do the first point well, you need to be transparent with your employers about your commitments (especially if you are working on multiple projects for him/her). If you are working freelance, then you need to make sure you know the deliverables and deadlines well for each job. 3. Prioritize Tasks Identify which tasks are most urgent or important each day or week. This helps in allocating your time and energy where they are most needed. The easy and impactful way to do this is by using The Eisenhower Matrix. 4. Keep Track Of Your Schedule After prioritizing tasks, diligent tracking ensures nothing falls through the cracks and deadlines are met. To manage time for these jobs effectively, I’ve found the timeboxing method, calendar, and reminders super helpful. 5. Work Smart Easier said than done 🙂 Finding ways to maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality is key. For me, the best way I found is: (1) planning exhaustively first, reading best practices, aligning with managers, then (2) doing deep work with the support of helpful tools. 6. Take Care of Yourself Managing multiple jobs can be stressful and exhausting. Ensure you’re getting enough rest, eating well, and taking breaks to sustain your productivity and well-being. 6 Tools to Manage Multiple Jobs 1. Digital Calendars (Google Calendar) I’ve used this to block time for each job, including specific tasks and deadlines. I also block my deep work time to get things done without distraction. 2. Task Management Tools I use a notebook for simple todolist 🙂 but for project management, I use Google Sheets most of the time. It’s a versatile and powerful tool for me. Because it’s basic, I don’t get into the trap of prettifying instead of working. 3. Time Tracking Tools I opt for simplicity, so I use the timer clock on my computer. I set the countdown time based on each task length I decided. 4. AIs I use ChatGPT and Gemini to quickly research new knowledge/definitions. They have been really helpful. Just need to remember to double-check the sources. ChatGPT Gemini 5. Note-Taking Apps I used to use paper and Google Docs. But now I’m switching to Saner.ai because I can easily capture information while I’m researching, search notes I saved months ago, and use many AIs 🙂 It’s the tool we are building, so it fits my needs nicely. Saner.ai 6. Communication Tools (Slack) I predominantly use Slack. One tip I’ve found is that turning on “deep work mode” and disabling notifications when needed significantly boosts productivity. This is because notifications from multiple projects are distracting sometimes. So there you have it—my tried-and-tested methods to manage multiple jobs and projects simultaneously. I hope you find these tips helpful in your own multitasking endeavors! 🚀

6 Strategies and Tools to Manage Multiple Jobs Effectively

How are you, hacker?
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Tech-Gate.org, apparent operated and published under the name Bourbiza Mohamed, has been under fire for this rampant copyright infringement site. 🧑‍💻 What happened in your world this week? It's been said that , , . Feeling stuck? We got you covered ⬇️⬇️⬇️ We hope you enjoy this worth of free reading material. Feel free to forward this email to a nerdy friend who'll love you for it.
See you on Planet Internet! With love,
The HackerNoon Team ✌️ @technologynews Read More. writing can help consolidate technical knowledge establish credibility and contribute to emerging community standards ANSWER THESE GREATEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS OF ALL TIME

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It is a general consensus that workload planning is one of the toughest parts of software development that can greatly impact the process either detrimentally or beneficially if done poorly or well, respectively.  When planning something, you work with intangible things, with events that haven’t taken place yet, you have to consider a lot of factors that may not be under your control. But workload planning has its own challenges as well. In CI/CD development cycles, the workload on the team can vary from one iteration to another, which creates additional difficulties in planning. Inconsistent and unregulated communication between the teams or even within the team, lack of team alignment may result in misinformation about the team or individual team member work capacities, which adds to the planning difficulty. If these issues aren’t tackled early on, you may have to deal with a frustrated team, unevenly distributed workloads, missed deadlines and ultimately inferior development results. For your company or customer it will mean exceeding allocated budgets and delivering a sub par product. Situations like the one I described above are easier to prevent than to correct. The vast experience my team and I have gathered from working with a range of projects and customers and the inspiration we continue to draw from the leading figures in our field, allowed us to refine our expertise and come up with a workable solution. In this article I’d like to introduce 6 principles of workload planning. Practical application of these principles allowed us to make educated planning decisions and resource allocations on numerous projects, creating team workflows that were comfortable for team members, transparent, and delivered excellent results. 1. The Principle of Dynamic Workload The word ‘dynamic’ in the name of that principle implies that a software project should be treated as a living, evolving construct, and it requires a fluid and responsive way of management. This is specifically true for workload planning. On the one hand, as a project manager, you want to distribute the tasks with a consideration for the skills and changing availability of each member of the team. On the other hand, you want to set clear priorities and stay within your timeboxing throughout the entire development process and not spend a lot of time on redrawing your plans in a very possible case of changing conditions and requirements. Implementation path is the technique that allows you to consider all the above-mentioned factors and create a detailed plan which focuses on technical aspects and acts as a bridge between technical and functional project roadmaps. The implementation path defines project milestones and conditions that must be met at these milestones. It also outlines how the team composition will change throughout different stages of the project and reflects shifting needs for particular experts. The layered structure of the implementation path is made to be accessible to each team member, so that they have a clear grasp of their own user stories and their place and status in the general picture. Working with the implementation path helps the team to have a bird’s eye view of the project development and planning, effectively reacting to changes in requirements or conditions, shifting the load and keeping the balance within milestones smoothly and without additional regulations. In many cases, the load distribution becomes so effective, it allows speeding up the development process in a given iteration. The Principle of Cross-functionality 2. In a way, cross-functionality is a team feature that greatly complements the dynamic workload principle. A cross-functional team shifts workload more easily because of their versatility, and is able to form a stable union. In such an environment, team decision-making becomes easier and more reliable, the team becomes more self-sufficient, without the need of formal proposals to higher-management for many important decisions. This speeds up many business processes and makes the team much more flexible when it comes to reacting to changing conditions and requirements. This flexibility allows to accommodate for more impacting changes without having to change the goals, development scale or budgets too much. But how to improve a team’s cross-functionality? Even if a team consists of members that bring together different perspectives and skill sets and is capable of innovative solutions, there are ways to boost cross-functionality. AI-driven tools can work with disparate data to create easy-to-understand materials that allow team members to quickly improve their expertise about adjacent fields and exercise critical thinking. AI tools can take on automating repetitive tasks, helping the team focus on more  strategic work and more complex problems. They can also propel collaboration and help provide access to diverse perspectives, thus enlarging the team’s outlook and improving cross-functionality. Careful selection of relevant AI tools for teamwork creates good alignment of the team efforts with project requirements and environments used. The Principle of Innovative Estimation Methods 3. Estimation is a crucial part of workload planning and much depends on its accuracy and integrity. Human error is common in such calculations and it can have long-lasting consequences.  AI estimation tools allow you to streamline your work in resource allocation, calculation and validation of risks. AI-driven instruments take into account more factors and contexts, and can create simulations and optimization algorithms for more effective risk response plans and resource allocation that factor in more variables than human calculations. When using AI tools to enhance your estimation efforts, it’s best to align your calculations with functional and non-functional project requirements and take into consideration the domain model complexity. It is also useful to use the entity-management approach when doing your estimations, and AI tools can help with that as well. Once you define entities that contribute to workload, be it skills, equipment, software, legal and regulatory issues, other resources, it becomes easier to estimate in terms of particular tasks, and identify potential bottlenecks. This ultimately contributes to a more flexible and dynamic workload management. 4. The Principle of Transparency The name of this principle speaks for itself. It is essential that you maintain transparency in workflows and processes on every level and in every type of communication. Whether between the team members or between the team and the customer, communication should always be clear and transparent. It is important that concerns are shared openly and the team has access to stakeholders with as few intermediaries as possible in order to avoid any miscommunication. Goals and requirements, clearly communicated and agreed on between the team and stakeholders allow for a very accurate distribution of responsibilities. This empowers engineers for feature enhancements and improves the overall product vision, thus making the team and the stakeholders a cohesive unit. At large, it means standardization. All terms and definitions across the project need to be consistent, goals and requirements should be expressed unambiguously, any double meanings should be avoided in all project documentation.This type of clarity helps the team and the customer to clearly distinguish and agree on core, additional and key features. It also allows to prioritize accordingly and establish all possible dependencies between the feature sets. What this results in is a balanced MVP with a solidly working combination of features and a clear vision of priorities and milestones for everyone involved. This way, both the team and the customer will have aligned expectations of the delivery process and reduce the number of blank spots in estimations. 5. The Principle of Minimized Communication In my practice, if communication within the team and between the team and stakeholders is not regulated, it can quickly get out of control with a snowball effect and consume a lot of time and effort better spent elsewhere.  While some topics and activities are repeated in each cycle iteration, others may be spontaneous and lack guidelines, which can result in avoidable conflicts and the team squandering energy. This is why I think it is important to formalize all workflows, introduce communication protocols for common situations and have guidelines for any information exchange. A good example is using a code style. Implementing a code style with specific tools like Prettier and ESLint helps everyone to be on the same page and have a very clear picture of code guidelines to which they can adhere. This can seriously cut down the amount of exhausting debates. It also helps with formative code review processes, getting the code style issue out of the picture entirely. Another best practices item would be creating checklists and defined step-by-step procedures for all common activities. This also has the additional perk of reducing the amount of guidance and supervision junior team members need, and eases onboarding of any new team members thus mitigating many risks team fluidity can bring about. In the worst-case scenario, if an engineer does not adhere to a checklist or skips necessary steps that they believe they have already tried, troubleshooting can take days or even weeks. There is an excellent book called "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande that provides valuable insights into implementing checklists when approaching complex tasks. 6. The Principle of Constant Learning To reiterate my statement from the beginning of this article, I think a software project should be viewed as a dynamic, evolving entity. But the same must also be said about a good team. Team stagnation can be disastrous for any project, so team evolution within and outside the project is crucial if you want to keep your team challenged and motivated. Aside from the obvious field of general skill improvement, one area where your team can expand their knowledge is their expertise in the project-related context. This benefits the team members as well as the project itself, as in-depth context knowledge allows the team to provide finer-tuned solutions and respond more precisely to user needs and pains. In terms of practical application of this principle, there are several ways to enrich your team’s learning. Organizing workshops is one of them. Workshops create an excellent platform for free and live knowledge exchange and practice between subject matter experts, can focus on project-related tasks, and their brainstorming sessions can bring about new and elegant solutions. Participating in practical workshops also largely reduces the learning curve in workshop topics for team members who are less experienced in this topic, and boosts their confidence. Workshops can also become good team-building opportunities. Skillset onboarding sessions become essential when integrating new team members and when a quick kick-off is expected of a new team member. These sessions help the new members to quickly align with the customer requirements and understand expectations related to communication, technical skills, and project involvement. Additionally, these sessions provide an opportunity for new team members to familiarize themselves with the project complexity and try out workflows and processes in a risk-free environment. This ensures that new team members can quickly catch up in their expected skill set and make immediate contributions to the project's success. Practical Examples of the 6 Principles’ Application I’d like to elaborate a little on the particular examples of when application of these principles helped me and my team to salvage projects that were in a bad state or on the brink of failure. In one case the project had been ongoing for an impressive 1.5 years and was still far from completion. Additionally, the client's team had abandoned the project. This was a challenging situation that required unconventional and innovative solutions. The turning point came when we made the decision to completely redesign the product. Although this introduced an element of risk due to the replacement of the core, it also reduced overall complexity. Introducing a clear implementation path with a dynamic team configuration in the timeline of clearly defined milestones allowed me and my small team to transform the trajectory of the project and deliver an MVP within 3 months from the start. Meticulous planning, precise execution, and experience were the key factors. In another case, our expertise played a crucial role in turning around a challenging situation for a customer team struggling with integration tasks. We were able to polish user story status and estimations, including the technical roadmap, by implementing the transparency  and minimized communication principles. We established clear and open communication protocols between team members and stakeholders, ensuring accurate distribution of responsibilities and improved product vision.This improved task placement and tracking, benefiting all teams and team members and giving them a clear view of their workload. It is a reminder that progress comes from wise decisions and dedication. We are currently working on this project and it has greatly picked up the pace. Conclusion Today’s software development sphere is extremely fast-paced. In order to stay afloat, projects simply can’t afford the way of trial and error. Meticulous and  accurate planning reduces the risk of so many problems that it becomes an absolutely invaluable part of the software development cycle. Planning your workload will allow your development and QA teams to function in a resourceful mode, prevent your experts and team members from burnouts and create a good balance of challenge and motivation. Applying these 6 principles in your practical work will help you have a clear picture of where you are resource-wise, task-wise and people-wise at any given point of your project's technical and functional roadmap. It will also help you be flexible in dealing with changes in conditions and requirements and accommodate them more easily and with fewer losses, thus sticking to your commitments with stakeholders and customers and delivering a reliable, expected quality product.

The 6 Principles of Planning Development and Testing Workload

TL;DR 🏎 Learn how to accelerate the code review process to maximize your productivity 🔬 Learn the best practices I came across for code reviewers ✏️ Learn the best practices I came across for pull request authors Imagine this. You just implemented a feature and wrote all the test cases. You felt great about the code so you opened a pull request and let your coworkers know. After days passing by, your pull request looked exactly the same as before. Seemingly untouched. No comment. No change request. You asked your coworkers again for code review and they agreed. Another week went by and nothing happened. You asked again and they told you that they needed more time because it wasn't a small PR and there was a lot to take into consideration. Finally, you saw a notification about a change request and you jumped on it right away. After resolving merge conflicts and fixing the edge cases, you requested a review again, and waited. Another change request appeared after a few days and you repeated the process again. You got an approval after another revision and the PR was finally merged to the trunk. After 4 weeks since you opened the PR. If you can relate to it, you're not alone. Many teams experienced such a slow code review process. In fact, it's in the development cycle. So I want to share with you the best practices of code review I learned to speed up the development and help you ship code faster. one of the major blockers Let's go. For Pull Request Authors The number one thing I've learned to boost code review productivity is to be thoughtful as an author. Other than producing clean code, there are many small things you can do to help your reviewers understand your pull requests proactively. Be The Driver You, the author, are the driver of the pace. Knowing that you rely on your coworkers during the code review process, you can clearly communicate the and upfront to align expectations. when what The is the most important to communicate because it tells your reviewers how urgent it is. The reviewers can plan their work accordingly. It's a great way to set a for the review process, and it's also a great way to show respect to your coworkers' time. when timebox To communicate the , make sure you include a PR description that focuses on helping your reviewers understand the purpose and code design of your changes. Instead of listing functionalities, start with an opening paragraph explaining the background and why this PR is needed helps the reviewers to build their . Other descriptions I find very useful are: what mental models : a helps the reviewers to and react quickly to your pull request. Code design diagrams screenshot of your high-level code structure review the overall design : a list of simple sentences like helps the reviews look for missing functionalities and test cases. Acceptance Criteria "An acknowledgment email is sent to the user after submitting the form." Keep It Concise Small, laser-focused pull requests are the easiest to read. How small? Google Engineering Practices say . has shown that the code review quality decreases as the code change increases. The longer your reviewers review at a time, the less defects they catch. So it's important to keep your pull request small and focus on one thing. If the feature you're developing is too large, you can consider splitting it into multiple pull requests using the technique. "can't make it small enough" A study "stacked pull request" It replaces a large pull request with a sequence of small pull requests. It helps the reviewers to focus on one thing at the time and aligns brilliantly with the principal of . continuous integration and continuous delivery For Code Reviewers Be Mindful about Biases A found that pull request authors faced different levels of pushback that varied depending on the authors' demographics. According to data, they that study published by Google in 2022 found Women faced 21% higher odds of pushback than men Black+ developers faced 54% higher odds than White+ developers Latinx+ developers faced 15% higher odds than White+ developers Asian+ developers faced 42% higher odds than White+ developers Older developers faced higher odds of pushback than younger developers We should be more mindful about the unintentional biases, especially in a diverse workplace. By being aware of it, we can avoid unnecessary pushback in code reviews and help accelerate the process. It's A Great Place for Learning, Not Snob Regardless of your level of experience, working as a developer is about constant learning. Pull request is an invaluable "marketplace" for developers to communicate and exchange feedback. So make sure it's a place of respect and always . aim for knowledge sharing For me it has always been an amazing occasion to learn about domain knowledge. Take my PR in , I learned so much about from a member. If he was to dismiss my request , the teaching moment would have never exist. Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide ECMAScript Language Specification Ecma TC39 without constructive feedback Inaction Is Bad I read about a blog post titled by a tech lead at Instagram a year ago. He claimed that an effective code review consist of "Aggressive Code Review" decisive action ASAP aiming to reduce the cost of mistakes demanding small pull request and move fast What I found refreshing in his approach is that . It minimizes the lead time to review and it has been very beneficial to me and my team. We are able to ship fast because we take proactive actions to code review. We don't let pending pull requests linger and we review with our business cases in mind. not acting on a pull request is not an option Final Thoughts To recap the best practices of pull request and code review to accelerate your development cycle establish clear communication about the and of a pull request when what create small and self-contained pull request that focus on one thing be mindful about biases be respectful to the author and fellow reviewers take decisive review action as soon as possible References - Emerson Murphy-Hill, Ciera Jaspan, Carolyn Egelman, Lan Cheng The Pushback Effects of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Age in Code Review - Emerson Murphy-Hill, Research Scientist, Central Product Inclusion, Equity, and Accessibility Using research to make code review more equitable - SMARTBEAR Best Practices for Code Review - Google Small CLs - Dr. Michaela Greiler Stacked pull requests: make code reviews faster, easier, and more effective - Reddit Code reviews becoming a blocker - Reddit Code review bottleneck - Wikipedia Timeboxing - James Clear Mental Models: Learn How to Think Better and Gain a Mental Edge - GitHub AppLand extension for VSCode - Google What to look for in a code review - Nathan Donaldson https://www.boost.co.nz/blog/2010/09/acceptance-criteria - Daw-Chih Liou Ex-Principal Engineer's Guide to Design Thinking and Continuous Delivery - GitHub Add Class Private Identifier - Ecma International ECMAScript® 2023 Language Specification - GitHub Ecma TC39 - Reddit Getting ripped apart in code reviews, is this normal? - Bobi Aggressive Code Review - Caitlin Sadowski, Emma Söderberg, Luke Church, Michal Sipko. Google, Inc. Modern Code Review: A Case Study at Google Also Published Here Want to connect? This article was originally posted on . Daw-Chih’s website

What to do When You're Tired of Slow Code Reviews

The late scholar Northcote Parkinson once wrote, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". Parkison was a British naval historian famous for his best-selling book Parkison's Law in which he advanced the quote above. The quote was written as part of the first sentence in a 1955 where he wrote to propose a scientific law that explains the growth of bureaucracy in an organisation. essay published on The Economist However, the law is found to be applicable to all forms of work. Parkison's Law provides insight into an overlooked barrier to efficient time management, a barrier that can be summarised as saying; every task takes exactly the amount of time you devote to it. To demonstrate his newly proposed law, Parkinson made an analogy of an elderly woman whose task is to dispatch a postcard to a post office across the street, but spent an hour finding the postcard, another hour looking for her glasses, 90 minutes searching for the address, 75 minutes writing the letter, 20 minutes contemplating whether or not to take an umbrella to the post office…till the day ended. A task that could have taken a busy man 3 minutes to execute left another unaccomplished after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil. He concluded. How Parkison's Law looks like as a Freelance Writer You are on a writing project and have one week to get it done, you started day one with background research on your client, and while on it, a notification grabs your attention, you clicked and found yourself endlessly scrolling through your Twitter feed responding to threads and catching up on latest trends. Day one passed and you're yet to complete the background research. Day two came, and work continues, on and on, but you find yourself in constant distractions and diversion from the main project till deadline hits and you feel like there's more to work on, there is more self-editing to do and more time needed to format. As a result, you get behind schedule and end up in the old lady's footing. To avoid such risk, freelance writers should create an effective writing process that allows them deliver on-demand and become more reliable. Creating an effective writing process The best way to get more done and deliver on-demand is to start your projects with a plan. With a plan, you are able to block out time every day, for as long as a project lasts, to work with concentrated effort and proactively minimize potential interruption in the process. To create an effective plan for your writing project, you'll need to split the process into timeboxes, timeline and deadline. Timebox Timeboxing is an that allocates a fixed amount of time to an activity, called a timebox, within which a planned activity takes place. Agile practice It is used in project management as a planning technique for projects that have foreseeable time frames of completion. Without timeboxing, projects usually work within a scope where time is not taken into consideration and in effect can be used inefficiently. In practice, timeboxing forces constraint, prioritization, and focus and it helps limit the tendency to procrastinate. Timeboxing works because it's found on a paradigm that constraints breed creativity. As a freelance writer, timeboxing can mean taking a chunk of time—say 3 hours every day—and dedicating that period for deep work on a writing project. That chunk of time is your timebox However, to make your timebox more of a sprint than a one-time long race, parse the 3 hours into smaller timeboxes, and separate them with short breaks —just like the that breaks a large piece of work into 25-minute chunks separated by 5-mins breaks. Pomodoro Technique for time management Breaking your timebox into smaller timeboxes ensures you don't overwork yourself and forces you to concentrate on your work within the timeframe. Timeline Setting a timeline is about squashing your deadline to a bare minimum, and not extending your completion until the deadline. If your deadline is in 7 days, you can set your timeline to be 5 days, and spread your timeboxes over each day of your timeline. Having a timeline helps because you are forced to focus on the work at hand, so you can eliminate procrastination and unnecessary distractions. It also provides time for a proper reevaluation of the finished work and the chance to deliver results ahead of time. As a freelance writer, setting a timeline gives you enough time to sleep over the draft, find new and creative angles and ultimately ship your draft ahead of time. Deadline When you have a deadline it’s like a storm ahead of you or having a truck around the corner. It’s menacing and it’s approaching, so you focus heavily on the task. Eldar Shafir, a professor at Princeton and co-author of Scarcity Deadlines are nothing but due dates, they are time limits for an activity, as a freelance writer this means submission day and there's probably no room for extension and once that time is exceeded, the task is considered overdue and might result in a bad client experience. Enhance your ability to get more done Distractions are the enemy of productivity. What's worse is they contribute to Parkison's effect. Switching back and forth between tasks and responding to every notification pop-up might seem like productive work until hours pass by and you fail to get anything done. To make the most of your timeboxes, you need to get rid of distractions. Treat your timeboxes like sacred hours where you are least responsive to external cues and most active in the present. Here are things you can do to beat distraction Pop-ups and vibrations, when active on your devices haunt your attention and might make you lose focus, so it is best to block them within your timeboxes. Block social notifications: Your timeboxes are sacred to your writing project and shouldn't be spent doing other things like checking social updates or watching videos that are not aligned with your writing project. Go offline: Browsers are generally research tools, not Instagram. You can try to freeze apps that are not research tools for the sake of your timebox. Resist the urge to open mobile apps that are not part of your research tool: Never get behind schedule again When you start a writing project, your brain is like a computer starting up, loading relevant information into your working memory. This “boot up” takes time but once achieved, the computer is set for work. Usually, information stays in people’s working memory from one day to the next, allowing them to get deeper and deeper into a task, as a result, they accomplish their aims faster than they could if those same hours were spread aimlessly across days or amidst distractions. Spreading timeboxes across a timeline and avoiding distractions altogether gets you deeper into the writing process which in turn gives you the chance to beat Parkison's effect and make your client trust you with deadlines.

Fixing The Parkison's Effect: How Freelance Writers can meet up with Schedule

Do You Know the Three Amigos? Don’t worry. This doesn’t mean we have to write our stories in Spanish! Instead, we’ll explore one of the agile ways of working, the Three Amigos. We’ll discover what the Three Amigos is with an example of how a session can help a team better understand requirements. What Are the Three Amigos? The “three amigos,” translated to “three friends” in English, is an agile way of working where three individuals with different perspectives come together to refine user stories. These three perspectives, as described by , consist of: Agile Alliance Business — What problem are we trying to solve? Development — How might we build a solution to solve that problem? Testing — What about this? What could happen? Therefore, when refining a user story, a developer, tester, and business analyst (BA) should be present to understand the requirements sufficiently. How Do the Three Amigos Work? Let’s go through an example of a team discussing a user story in a three amigos session. The team sits down together with the following user story to refine: As an employee, I want to submit my timesheet so I can get paid Developer: So, what do we need to capture on the timesheet? BA: We need to capture the number of hours worked each day in a calendar month. Developer: No problem at all. We can create a form where users can enter their work hours daily. Then, when the user hits submit, can we send an email to HR to process the timesheet. BA: Unfortunately, an email isn’t going to cut it. We need to send this information to our HR system as we have an automated process for payroll. Developer: OK, in that case, we can send it to the HR system via the HR API. Tester: What happens if they enter incorrect information? Developer: We can provide feedback to the user. For example, we can show a validation message when a user provides invalid data. Tester: What is invalid data? Can a user enter a negative number for hours worked? Is there a maximum number of hours a user can work on a given day? BA: No, a user should only be able to enter positive numbers up to twelve. Tester: OK, we should write a test case to cover this. Developer: I’ll also ensure we have the appropriate validation for the number of hours. BA: Also, I just remembered we need to send an email notification to the line manager for approval. Developer: So, we need to make sure we submit the timesheet in a “review” state, so the employee doesn’t get paid until their line manager approves it? BA: Correct. Tester: What if the line manager is absent? BA: That’s a good question. We should also email line manager B. Tester: What if the line manager wants to reject the submitted timesheet? Developer: This is turning out to be a lot of development work. May I suggest we create new user stories for these additional scenarios? The team agrees the user story is now quite large, so they split out the email notification work into separate user stories for later refinement: As a line manager, I want to get notified if one of my staff submits a timesheet so I can review it As a line manager, I want to be able to approve my staff timesheets so I can ensure my staff get paid As a line manager, I want to be able to reject a timesheet so I can ensure my staff aren't paid incorrectly Developer: Is there anything else we need to consider for capturing the timesheet details? BA: I think that’s everything covered. We can iterate on this in the future if we need to. The team moves on to the next story. What Did the Team Discover From This Session? For this single user story, the team discovered the following: Firstly, the number of hours worked for each day of the month must be captured. Second, the number of hours worked must be positive, up to twelve. Third, the form must be validated and feedback provided to the user. Finally, when the user submits their timesheet, the system must send the data to the HR API in a state of review. On top of that, the team has created three new user stories. They are now better prepared to estimate and take on this work. Best Practices There’s no right or wrong way to refine user stories using three amigos. Instead, I’d suggest trying it out to find what works best for your team. However, here are a few good practices that can help: Timebox sessions — Timeboxing helps focus the team; you can always return to a story later if you don’t finish refining it. 45 minutes to an hour is generally a good rule of thumb. Rotate team members each session — this helps share knowledge amongst the team. Have one member from each area — different perspectives provide additional value. Don’t rush — it takes as long as it takes. Refining stories upfront means we’re not asking as many questions when we’re in development. Takeaways From the example above, we can see the value of the Three Amigos. The developer helped to define the solution to the problem. The tester provided value by highlighting potential issues. The BA provided information right there and then, so the team didn’t have to go away to find the answers they desperately needed. The team is now more confident in taking on the story in their next sprint! First published here

Three Amigos Teach Us a Lot About Writing Better Agile User Stories 

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” “Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know…. Do you like sentences?” Annie Dillard – The Writing Life As I started writing articles for this blog for over a year now, I thought to review the lessons I learned about writing during this journey. When to Write What started as stealing time to write, here and there, progressed into a much more organized framework. Most of my writing is done during lunch breaks or on weekend mornings. My husband and my daughter go on the weekly grocery shopping, and I stay home, trying to take advantage of this time as much as possible. I do not write every day, as I research heavily for some of my articles. Sometimes, I spend two or three days a week simply recollecting and organizing notes from the books and articles I read over the weeks, with no time allocated to writing posts. I tend to enjoy the company of my thoughts, so when I go on a walk or do cleaning, cooking, etc., I focus my thoughts on the articles that are in progress. What is the main idea of the article? Is this argument weak? Do I need to research more this concept? I can’t seem to produce anything of value in the evenings. Thus, I try not to write articles after my daughter falls asleep. The Writing Ritual I keep my writing ritual straightforward: start to block websites or disable the Internet connection and write during Pomodoro cycles. the cold turkey application Listening to podcasts or music (even study music) seems to distract me, so I don’t listen to anything while writing. I try to write as intensely as I can during these sessions, and timeboxing seems to be working efficiently (timeboxing is time blocking with boundaries. Consistency I planned to write an article per week. This strategy worked most of the time, but sometimes I found that I needed more time to tackle some of the more profound ideas I wanted to explore. That meant I needed to bend my rules and write only an article in two weeks. Other times, especially when words feel like rivers with ice floes in spring, I publish two articles in a week. Over the weeks, being consistent helped me battle the … Writer’s Block I read somewhere in that there is no true writer’s block but a case of not reading enough. I somewhat agree with this idea, as I currently have about 20-30 drafts in the backlog that evolved from the notes I collected from the books and articles I read. Mason Currey’s books But I noticed that writer’s block is also a case of procrastination for me. Sometimes, article drafts resemble marble to be sculpted, and I don’t know what will I find inside that rough marble block. This freedom is a blessing for some of my creative writing articles, and other times, the same freedom silences me, as I don’t know what am I trying to say. In such cases, I tend to postpone writing that article until the weekend comes along and I have to publish something. And so, I learned that not every idea I have is worthy of being published. Better to delete that draft and go on to the next. Poetry Along this year of writing, I experimented with , and then I realized how much truth was in this quote from Paul Valéry, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned”. poetry I got scared by how consumed I was by writing poems, especially writing Insleepia. I would wake at night when better scenes, words or rhymes came to my mind, and I would rewrite the poem compulsively. As expected, when I am working on nonfiction articles, I don’t get bothered while sleeping with any feelings burning me inside, aching to flee. Still, I revise all my pieces thoroughly because You’ll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. William Zinsser – On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction Essays Some of my articles are long-form, and I was told many times to reduce their length. But after some experimenting, I discovered what I like to write about at this stage in my life: essays. I take an idea, look at it from different points and construct an essay about it. Blogs were all the rage a few decades ago. Now, accessible, consumable TikTok-like video content is king. Still, I believe long articles have a decisive advantage over videos: readers can quickly scroll over the whole article, anchoring their eyes on bold words, subheading titles, ending phrases. On text, it is much easier to grasp the ideas of the content and decide if the article is deserving of our time. On video or audio, we don’t have such luxury of rapidly registering the entire content in a matter of seconds. Another reason why I publish long articles is that I undoubtedly suffer from impostor syndrome. I am not classically trained in psychology, neuroscience, children’s pedagogy, etc. What credentials do I have to write articles about self-improvement, neuroscience or childrearing? None. The fact that I am a white, middle-class parent of a neurotypical, able-bodied, smart, happy, little girl doesn’t make me a parenting expert. And so, I go into much detail in these essays while putting quotes from other’s people works as either validations or rejections to my ideas. I do my best to be mindful of my biases and not cherry-pick evidence to boost my articles. But first and foremost, I write these articles primarily for or me to explore concepts I find interesting. Also, I reread my articles when I feel like I have lost my balance. my daughter Give it All One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard with seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath like well water. Annie Dillard – The Writing Life I tended to keep some of my better phrases or thoughts for yet another article, another time, another me. And then I read The Writing Life from Annie Dillard. How much truth is in this concept: write it all, and inspiration will replenish itself as it makes way for other thoughts. Messy First Drafts Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something —anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird The beauty of this advice is that I don’t have to produce excellent content from the first try because, at its heart, writing is not about writing but editing. Editing Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly. Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird In his book, Stephen King has a formula for editing: On Writing the second draft = first draft – 10% or that Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings. The last quote from King is, in fact, from another variation of the same advice (“In writing, you must kill all your darlings”). an adaptation The editing to kill my darlings is a harsh reminder to ruthlessly eliminate any expressions or paragraphs that won’t help the story, especially excessively embellished parts. I apply King’s formula by looking at the “Reading Time” information at the top of the article. If a draft shows a reading time of eight minutes, I try to edit and make it at most seven minutes. As my native language is Romanian, I am very conscious of my limitations related to writing in English. The appeal of English is that I have a much larger platform to express my ideas, as people from places all around the world can find and read my articles. It was a rough adaptation as my Romanian husband is my editor, reading and commenting on my drafts. I will never forget the first editing sessions where he slaughtered my articles. My grammar was atrocious, my choice of words horrendous. I was thinking in Romanian and unconsciously translating my articles into English. In time, I learned to enjoy the merciless editing process where messy content starts to grow into a somewhat publishable article. Before publishing an article, I read my drafts aloud, careful of how sounds and words cling together. Can I find a better synonym? Can I express this phrase more simply? If not, delete it. Grammarly Premium is invaluable at this stage of editing. Paragraph 1 is a disaster — a tissue of generalities that seem to have come out of a machine. No person could have written them. Paragraph 2 isn’t much better. But Paragraph 3 begins to have a somewhat human quality, and by Paragraph 4 you begin to sound like yourself. You’ve started to relax. It’s amazing how often an editor can throw away the first three or four paragraphs of an article, or even the first few pages, and start with the paragraph where the writer begins to sound like himself or herself. With each rewrite, I try to make what I have written tighter, stronger and more precise, eliminating every element that’s not doing useful work. Then I go over it once more, reading it aloud, and am always amazed at how much clutter can still be cut. William Zinsser – On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction Ending an Article Knowing when to end an article is far more important than most writers realize. You should give as much thought to choose your last sentence as you did to your first. Well, almost as much. The perfect ending should take your readers slightly by surprise and yet seem exactly right. They didn’t expect the article to end so soon, or so abruptly, or to say what it said. But they know it when they see it. For the nonfiction writer, the simplest way of putting this into a rule is: when you’re ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit. William Zinsser – On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction I cannot state how much help I got from these quotes. I do my best to make my articles sing with a finisher note, especially in a symmetric way that captures the essence of what I have discussed in that article. I noticed that ending the article on a solid note combines well with the “give it all” concept so that I know that I didn’t hold anything for me, but freely sharing what freely was coming to me. Know When to Hit the “Publish” Button Your ambition is not to write the Great American Novel. Your ambition is to finish the damn book. This is a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again. It’s true of so many things in our lives. Because we’re afraid of failing, sometimes we turn away from it and don’t do it at all. I had to surrender to my own mediocrity. I’m going to write as well as I can. The measuring stick is not, Do other people love it? Did it win the National Book Award? But rather, Did I do the work? And, Did I do it as well as I could? Answering yes to those two things is my guiding light. Cheryl Strayed – Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar A good enough published article is better than a most polished but never published article. Reading this advice from Strayed reminded me of how important it is to keep my perfectionist tendencies in place. There is a sweet spot where I think, breath and take the whole article in my mind. But then, it is time to let it go into the streams of the Internet and work on another piece. Reading Becoming a writer can also profoundly change your life as a reader. One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard to make it look effortless. You notice how a writer paints in a mesmerizing character or era for you. Anne Lamott – Bird by Bird Books that have that magical quality of sharpeners to my crayon mind or of water flowing from letters on pages to vivid imagery are so much dearer to my heart now after I started writing on my own. I write the quotes I loved, I memorize them and talk to them. I also became less patient with other books, as I consider finishing a mediocre book optional. This blog is not my first attempt at writing. Nor the second. Across the years, I started and abandoned multiple blogs because quoting Cheryl Strayed, “I know it’s hard to write, darling. But it’s harder not to.” There were many ideas kept inside me that wanted a way out, and expressing myself through words is a medium that feels raw and true and works perfectly as a recharging self-care activity. Some of my articles and poems might look laughable to others, but I will keep them online to remind myself how my timid writing in a language that is not my native one has changed over the years and has grown in aliveness from sentence to sentence, from week to week, from me to another me. After all, we are never quite finished with becoming ourselves. Previously published here .

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