The Balanced Calendar - How to Optimize your Time

Are you losing precious time trapped in meeting misery? Lack of time to get real work done or simply think contributes to unhappy employees and follow-on poor performance. A look at four key metrics can help. In this talk, Dominica shares an experiment to help you get buy-in to optimize your calendar.

Transcript

1. The Balanced Calendar How to optimize your time Dominica DeGrandis
2. @dominicad
3. 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 @dominicad
4. @dominicad
5. The all day cram The 30 minute jam The triple booked wham
6. The 30 minute jam 10 meetings a day - perpetual stop and go - exacerbates context switching @dominicad
7. Back-to-back 7am to 7pm meetings leave zero flexible time – no room for unexpected important urgent work The all day cram
8. A canceled meeting creates rework – which has a cost The triple booked wham
9. 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
10. Maker calendar Ultradium cycles: https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/science/rhythms/
11. Manager calendar @dominicad
12. Combo calendar - before
13. @dominicad Combo calendar - after D1 D1 D1 D1
14. 3 Interruption busters to help you optimize time 1. Pomodoros 2. Do not disturb hours 3. Office hours
15. @dominicad Pomodoros Break down work into time- boxed intervals separated by short breaks. Set timer for 25 or 30 min and work to finish your task until timer rings. Pomodoros provide intense focus time.
16. @dominicad Do-not-disturb hours Set a regular cadence to let people know when you are available and when you are not available.
17. @dominicad Office hours A regular cadence of office hours signals times when people can schedule time on your calendar, or drop by for important discussions.
18. @dominicad “But that won’t work here.”
19. “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
20. @dominicad
21. 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 Troy Magennis team dashboard - http://focusedobjective.com/team-metrics-right/ based on work by Larry Maccherone “It’s relatively easy to game a single metric. Measure the impact of change in one metric by showing the other metrics.” ~ Troy Magennis
22. @dominicad Look at Flow time Balanced Flow chart exercise – How Fast? www.ddegrandis.com
23. @dominicad Look at Throughput Balanced Flow chart exercise – How productive? www.ddegrandis.com
24. Balanced Flow chart exercise – How good? www.ddegrandis.com Look at Quality change failure rate (CFR) % of done FD items total # of done items
25. 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? www.ddegrandis.com
26. @dominicad If your end-to-end workflow network isn’t connected, is there any point in optimizing one particular area? It’s hard to discover bottlenecks with sparse visibility on work across disconnected systems.
27. @dominicad DevOps Workshops Location: Imperial Ballroom A Mon: 4:10 - 5:10 pm Tue: 1:40 - 2:40 pm Max capacity 100 (FIFS)
28. 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
29. Connect with me! Subject: DOES17 FLOW Email: dominica@tasktop.com Website: ddegrandis.com @dominicad therealdominicad /in/dominicadegrandis