I’ve seen this pattern before. Work tightens - end-of-year reviews, auditors wanting receipts on every decision, the odd mathematics of pursuing a promotion while doing the current job and creating space for whoever inherits it. Half-hour blocks stacked into a grid where each one demands a different mental model.
And when that ends, I don’t rest. I add more.
One of the weird things about being an Engineering Director (ED) is that the stuff that lands on your plate is almost always very important but not urgent. This happens often and is a constant cycle of evaluation. Misjudging urgency or importance can cause a ton of problems for you and your team. Here’s how I think about navigating this.
The first big pitfall is treating non-urgent tasks as urgent. This feels good in the moment—it’s nice to check something off your list or swoop in to save the day—but it doesn’t take long before the cracks start to show. Constantly working in “everything’s on fire” mode will:
Continuing some of the thinking from my last post about Notetaking for Business, I had mentioned that I use Obsidian for all of my note taking needs. I make pretty extensive notes for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting that I play most weeks with a group of friends.
The notes I take for my game are pretty straight forward, but there are a lot of them. I do use some Obsidian-specific plugin features to enable my game to run smoothly, but this is more of an add-on than an essential component of my notes themselves.
I have seen endless books and blogs and forum posts espousing the use of specific note-taking techniques that are meant to give a leg up to anyone who takes notes as part of their daily life. I am bothered that most of these techniques assume a certain disposition of note-taker – You are either a student taking notes for topics in class that you will later be tested on, or you are a “researcher” of some kind taking notes to help you think through complex topics for deeper meaning.
In the former case, students have a variety of note-taking tools that have lasted for what seems like millennia. Cornell Notes, a system designed in the 1950’s, is a note-taking strategy that allows students to quiz themselves on details they take notes on, which is generally regarded as a good practice for study. Sadly, there are many studies that report the general achievement of Cornell Notes takers isn’t statistically better than other students.
slug: median-update
authors:
A few random thoughts today, taking a break from the vacation log, which is already a little overdue and getting stale: