My productivity flow and rituals, 2020 edition

Two years ago, I published a LinkedIn article about my Friday Rituals productivity process. I recently revisited it to share it with some colleagues and realized that it needed an update because it’s evolved since then.

The Friday Ritual is two parts: the process itself and then the ritual around it.

The Process

I block out most Fridays in my schedule, so I can close and “park” everything I’ve been working on during the week. I work a standard US office week and Monday to Thursday are the times for me when I find and start new work and complete old work. Friday is also the day when I get some thinking time in, and it’s when Brad Anderson and I record new episodes of our show, The Endpoint Zone. For me, this is a creative endeavor and a wonderful way to end the week!

I still use my personal Kanban board in Trello as my place for keeping all my work. Each major action is still a card. I still have four main columns, Backlog, waiting on others (aka the pen), Doing, and Done.

I’ve added two columns over the past couple of years:

• Incoming, for new and therefore not yet labelled and organized tasks.
• Urgent + Important, for tasks that need doing very soon and which if I don’t do them “soon” will have immediate (negative) impact. The purpose of the column is to elevate some tasks from the backlog, but only where strictly necessary.

How I use those cards has improved slightly too.

I’ve added a labelling system that lets me glance at the cards to see what type of work it is. My labels are admin, manager admin; content creation; travel tasks; customer engagements and big rocks. The last is a catch all for my most strategic work. Multiple labels can apply to a single card.

I’ve also started to add due dates to items in the Waiting on others column, so I know when to chase up on specific actions to keep them moving.

Lastly, I’ve start to apply “very next action” thinking from GTD to each card. I ask myself for each card: “what is the very next action I need to do to move the task forward”? Surfacing this on the label of the card helps reduce the cognitive load of picking up a task. It’s way better to write “Check bank balance” than writing “Bank” as I could easily forget what I need to do at the bank. I try to catch all of these when they move from Incoming to Backlog and then again on a Friday as part of my Friday ritual.

The ritual

My ritual has changed and grown. I now have a repeating Trello card every Friday that pops into my Doing column. This card is a multi-part check list that I complete to close my week:  

• Triage all mail in my inbox. I regularly end the week with just 3 or 4 emails in my inbox where I want to keep track of an ongoing conversation. For any remaining unread mails, if the tasks are two minutes or less, I do them. Longer tasks become cards on the Kanban.
• Approve all my expenses and invoices. As a manager I’ve become a “chief approval officer”.  I like this task to be as quick as possible, while still ensuring I query any potential issues.
• Submit my own expenses.
• Plan my calendar for the next two weeks to. I resolve conflicts; ensure 1:1s are scheduled with all my team; ensure I have focus time blocks booked; ensure my Out of Office messages are up to date for travel; and ensure the all my meetings are planned so I know what the outcomes  will look like.
• Review every item in Waiting on others to update the due date, the very next action and, ultimately remind people that I need the thing or if I no longer need the thing to call it off.
• Review my Backlog to make sure they all list the very next action.
• Update my weekly Plan and Review. This is a new tool I added in 2019 based on work by James Clear and Michael Hyatt and I’ll post on this soon. It’s not quite ready for prime time yet.

This ritual has now kept me sane for four years. It allows me to focus on work and have time off at the weekend. I hope it can for you too.