A Leader’s Backlog - Daily Reflections

This article is part of 'A Leader’s Backlog,' a multipart series designed to guide leaders through the journey of transforming reactivity into impactful, goal-oriented leadership.

Introduction

The transition from an Engineering IC path towards leadership brings with it many changes, some of which might us by surprise. Managing your own backlog is one of those changes. It takes a very different dynamic from what we are used to as ICs where we are used to having a shared backlog with all the team. It’s also very easy to fall into a reactive cycle where you know you did a lot of work by the end of the week but still don’t feel productive.

In this series, I will share some tips on how I managed to turn my routine from reactivity towards more impactful goals, and consistent growth.

NOTE: My process also relies on a task manager or note-taking app and a prioritisation framework. However, these are topics beyond the scope of this series. Here, we will focus on the art of time-boxed reflection.

Reflection Process

For any change to stick with us, it must become an atomic habit. To enable such good habits, we need to introduce small, non-intrusive tasks that can be done quickly, in minutes, so we can do them daily without too much effort. Longer tasks should happen less frequently but will require your complete dedication to be effective.

In my sessions, I observe that the main missing ingredient in these situations is most of the time, the art of reflection and directing focus. This commonly happens because, by default, our brains are wired to believe that busy == productive. We need to start challenging this assumption every day before we switch into execution mode if we want to turn the ship around. We want to optimise towards a healthy balance of focus time and then direct that focus towards the most important goals.

The good habits I have to come to build over time and that I will explain in the different articles are:

• Daily Reflections: ~15 mins
• Weekly Reflections: ~30 mins?
• Longer Term Relections: ~120 mins

In this first part of the series, we will cover the first part - Daily Reflections.

Daily Reflections

If you’re running in reactive mode, the first step is to start improving your day through these tactical reflection points. We want to get to a place where at the end of the day we feel productive and effective!

Day Start Reflection

Goal: Pick the most important or timely tasks, and set expectations for the day.

Time: ~10 mins?

Look at your calendar and see what calls you have booked and how much focus time you can achieve.

Assess your scheduled daily calls and assert they all bring value; see if any of them can happen async. Before you set your daily goals, it's imperative that you also assess how you well do you feel at the start of the day - as a human being. Using a traffic light reference, I expect myself to achieve more on green days ?? than on yellow ?? or red ?? days and so should you! Setting your own expectations is the very first step towards a better calbration of success and failure. This exercise can boost collaboration and safety among colleagues, as Steph explains in her article: “Nurturing Collaborative Leadership in Remote Environments”.

Next, deduct ~20% of your focus time for repetitive, 2-minute activities. These tasks include skimming through Slack or emails and answering quick requests. These activities will always happen, the only difference is if we plan for them or not. When this time is not planned, the result is a feeling of distraction and potentially frustration. When they are planned, our focus time is carved around them and we get an impression of calmer control over our day.

From here, we know how much focus time we have and how well we feel as humans, and the last thing we need is to choose which tasks from our notes/backlog will become our daily goals. The selected tasks for the day should be the only ones you think of. One thing that will help you forget the rest, is to place all your other tasks somewhere you won’t need to see. In my case, I use a section called Later and I collapse it in Obsidian. This can be a separate column if you’re utilising a tool like Trello. The intention is for you to not care about the remaining backlog as long as you know it’s recorded and will be prioritised regularly.

With your daily goals set, you’re now prepared to start the day with a higher probability of success!

Day End Reflection

Goal: Celebrate wins and learn for a better tomorrow.

Time: ~5 mins?

This is most often the part that is skipped by many, and I cannot recommend it enough. If we want to see quick changes, we need to be able to learn quickly. Give yourself 5 minutes at the end of the day to reflect on what you achieved and feel blessed. Look at what was not achieved and assess if this was by choice because of some more urgent request coming through. Or was it due to high self-expectations in your daily start reflection??

At the end of your day, you use this space to ask yourself what things you want to repeat and avoid tomorrow. Note them down and review them in your daily start reflection tomorrow.

Summary

The key point of this post is that we can turn our days into more meaningful and impactful ones simply by allowing ourselves time to reflect and learn. As a lead, you need to give yourself the time and space to carve out the direction you want to drive towards.

If you're stuck in a reactive routine, the first step to take is to give yourself 15 minutes a day to organise your goals and to learn from the day. Mark them in your calendar to help yourself stick to the habit. Sharing your goals and learnings with a buddy or peer can turn this exercise into an interesting collaboration.

In our next part, we will cover weekly reflection to start extending our planning beyond one day and achieving a more significant impact.

Stay tuned and reach out if you have feedback or want to discuss in more depth!

Further Reading Material

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
• When to Choose Synchronous Vs. Asynchronous Communication
• Avoiding procrastination in 3, 2, 1: Learn about the 2-minute rule
• Eisenhower Priority Matrix
• What is Focus Time and how does it impact productivity?