Meetings, Meetings, Meetings
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings.
Welcome to the end of the year, we're in single-digit weeks before the year ends! Hope you're ready for the Holidays and looking to spend some restorative time with friends or family.
I hope you had a good weekend and managed to rest.
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Things I enjoyed in the past week
I've always talked about the C4 model with anyone who would listen. Here's an interesting interview with the Author: The C4 model: misconceptions, misuses and mistakes - Simon Brown
I recently came across a podcast episode titled "Root Cause Analysis vs. Resilience Engineering." I liked the insights shared and the overall conversation.
I kept on reading Influencer Creep*, it’s been a long time since I spent so much time with a book.
This past week, I reached Friday and was thinking, What just happened?
This tends to happen more often recently, as I spend more time guiding and advising teams, there's less time for "tasks" like coding or other tasks related to ICs. That always sends me into some existential spiral. What do I do here? Type of thing. I think this will always happen as we move more into a principal role, or dealing more with the leadership and management chain, as opposed to day-to-day tasks that teams are more focused on.
What this means for most weeks is that meetings are the work, and you cannot avoid them, and instead you should lean into them. Even if I didn't want to have as many meetings, I should delegate tasks to team members closer to the actual work, so that everyone learns and grows.
Of course, in practice, this is much harder than it sounds, and I end up stressing about all the uncompleted tasks I have, as well as the time spent in meetings.
I've always been told that you should say no and control your calendar, but it's a "boiling frog situation" where you don't notice you're being overwhelmed and it's too late. What I've learned is that you only start saying no and delegating meetings until you declare calendar bankruptcy. Once you reach that point, it becomes clearer what to prioritize and what not to. Especially as you shift into a staff role, you might feel important for attending so many meetings!
One interesting aspect of this shift is that I start rethinking the outcomes of my work, which previously focused on delivering individual tasks or tickets, and now shift to efficiency improvements for teams, or help bring clarity for a project, like discovery, or throughout working with other teams, advocating for solutions and getting them scheduled, etc.
Your turn!
How do you think about meetings in your current role? Are they a time sink, or is your work at this point? Let me know your thoughts by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
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