Managing Time #

Your time is your greatest resource and needs to be managed well. We want you to have harmony between your personal and work life and one of the foundational requirements for this is to manage your time well.

Managing your team begins with the expectations you set with your team. As a distributed workforce, we have the privilege of choosing our work time to some extent. To do this well, figure out what time you are most productive. Some of us prefer early mornings and late nights for focused and deep work, while others prefer afternoons. Whichever it may be, communicate that with the team.

This will help you plan meetings with the team. We work with people and there will be meetings or group activities every now and then. Plan for them so that they don’t interfere with your times of flow. Typically, most projects have a standup between 10 AM to noon. Figure out when are the regular meetings held for your project and block your uninterrupted deep work time.

Understanding flow #

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time.

Guard your flow state #

You are the one most responsible for guarding your time and your flow state. Being accountable and responsible for your tasks means that you would communicate with your team to set expectations to protect your own time. Meetings happen, distractions happen, interruptions happen; what is most important is how quickly you can recover from these interruptions by context switching effectively.

Prioritization #

While the project tasks will be prioritized by the team collectively, prioritizing daily tasks falls to you. You will be best served by learning mental models that help you prioritize effectively and help you say no to things that don’t matter.