the balanced calendar: how to optimize your time (does17 sfo)
TRANSCRIPT
The Balanced CalendarHow to optimize your time
Dominica DeGrandis
@dominicad
Agenda§ Address the too-many-meetings complaint§ Provide some ways for you to optimize your time § How to get buy in from the boss to do so
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The all day cram
The 30 minute jam
The triple booked wham
The 30 minute jam
10 meetings a day - perpetual stop and go - exacerbates context switching
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Back-to-back 7am to 7pm meetings leave zero flexible time § no room for unexpected important urgent work§ disappointed people§ cancelled meetings (how often cancelled?)§ How much time is wasted rescheduling meetings?
The all day cram
A canceled meeting creates rework – which has a cost
The triple booked wham
3 Calendar solutions
1. Maker calendar: Creative people (developers, designers, writers)
2. Manager calendar: Decision makers
3. Combo calendar: People who do both
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
Eachtypeofscheduleservesitspurpose- exceptwhentheycollideOne reason developers dislike meetings so much is because they're on a different schedule.
Ultradium cycles:brainnaturallygetslullinconcentrationevery90– 120minwhenawakeb/cbrainwavefrequenciesrise,thensink.https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/science/rhythms/
Maker calendar
Unstructured time after dept meetings
Manager calendar
Uppermgt is inapositiontomakeeveryonemeetattheirfrequency.Butiftheyknowppl workingforthemneedlongchunksoftime,theycanarrangecalendartoaccommodateprimemakertime
mgrs meet w/ other mgrsduring prime maker time
Combo calendar - before
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Combo calendar - after
D1 D1
D1
D1
3 Interruption busters to help you optimize time
1. Pomodoros
2. Do Not Disturb hours
3. Office hours
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Pomodoros
Break down work into time-boxed intervals separated byshort breaks.
Set timer for 25 or 30 min andwork to finish your task untiltimer rings.
Pomodoros provide intense focustime.
atimesavingtechniqueintroducedbyFrancescoCirillo,authorofThePomodoroTechnique
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Do-not-disturb hours
Set a regular cadence to letpeople know when you areavailable and when you arenot available.
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Office hours
A regular cadence of officehours signals times whenpeople can schedule time onyour calendar, or drop by forimportant discussions.
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“But that won’t work here.”
“The difference between successful
people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.”
~Warren Buffett
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/756.Warren_Buffett
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How to get buy-in from the boss
Measure at least one metric trend in 4 different areas.§ How fast § How productive § How good § How predictable
TroyMagennisteamdashboard - http://focusedobjective.com/team-metrics-right/ basedonworkbyLarryMaccherone
“It’s relatively easy to game a single metric. It’s important to measure the impact of change in one metric by showing the other metrics.” ~ Troy Magennis
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Look at Flow time
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How Fast?
www.ddegrandis.com
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Look at Throughput
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How productive?
www.ddegrandis.com
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How good?
www.ddegrandis.com
Look at Qualitychange failure rate (CFR)
% of done FD itemstotal # of done items
Consider the 90th percentile to discuss the probability of finishing work
within so many days.
90th percentile filtered for business requests
Balanced Flow chart exercise – How predictable?
90thpercentile:valueforwhich90%ofthedatapointsaresmaller&10%arebigger
If your end-to-end workflow networkisn’t connected, is there any point inoptimizing one particular area?
It’s hard to discover bottlenecks withsparse visibility on work acrossdisconnected systems.
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DevOps Workshops
Location: Imperial Ballroom AMon: 4:10 - 5:10 pmTue: 1:40 - 2:40 pm
Max capacity 100 (FIFS)
1. Try the interruption busters: Pomodoros, Office hours, DND hours.
2. Consider the balanced Flow chart experiment to improve.
Call to action – Experiment for a balanced calendar
Connect with me!Subject: DOES17 FLOWEmail: [email protected]: ddegrandis.com
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therealdominicad
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