Making Work Work: Blocking Time

Tempus fugit.

I've been thinking, and reviewing my work history, as I try to figure out how to proceed with some next steps. I'm thinking that maybe this whole distributed teamwork trend (WFH, SOHO with an emphasis on the H, etc.), that this pandemic has pushed most folks into doing a lot more, might be generally organized into a set of common ways of blocking out time and collaborating both synchronously and asynchronously while life and work go on. What do you think of the following as suggestions for thinking about how we work (and maybe adopting formally as the way my team of teams organize our scheduling). NOTE: This is focused primarily towards the kind of work that I personally usually do (project-oriented R&D, model-building, programming, coding data, envisioning, creating, etc.).  Our work tends to be organized by the week, as briefly discussed later. Take a gander and toss your comments at me about my stupidity in considering imposing such an approach to scheduling our limited synchronous work periods on anyone other than myself. Believe it or not, I'm trying to figure out how to better organize our new team of teams' distributed work (and especially our coordination of the relatively few required synchronous portions of that work) to enable everyone to collaborate and coordinate more effectively, remotely, across time zones, organizational boundaries, and even cultures and national boundaries, while maintaining a better balance of individual work (the main point in my kind of R&D) with group work (essential, but too often given control over everyone's schedules, leading to longer and less effective meetings eating everyone's time, or spinning the wheels as I tend to think of it). And to recognize we all live in the real world (I think, right? Hmmm, maybe I'd better rethink that one?) where life intrudes, especially when we're at home. Urgent Care happens, yanno, especially with children, young adults, their grandparents, and assorted critters (both pets and livestock) around. Building resilience, flexibility, joy, compassion, and a strong work ethic into our work-lives is important, IMHO.

Big Blocks

4-hour "Make It Work" chunks of concentration for solo worker for deep thought, complex mental models, with very limited interruptions allowed.

2-hour "Pairs Programming/Work" chunks of intense work between two collaborators with very limited interruptions allowed.

Little Blocks

90-minute "Let's Get This All Done" work sprints, individual work often with frequent short collaboration with some other team members, completing (and coordinating) tasks/to-do's.

20-minute "Team Orienteering" sprints, whole team in continuous group meeting with team leader, orienting on new problem/approach/need/project/tasking for whole team.

20-minute "Pairs Teamwork Coordination Session" where one pair meets with team leader to work out teamwork details/problems and/or clarify tasking, or resolve outstanding issues.

15-minute "Directive Guidance" meetings, one-on-one (or three-on-one) with your supervisor/management/HR (NOTE: this is also where those hard "Come to Jesus" meetings fit).

10-minute "Quick Take" team meeting for quick updates on status, team leader and all team members.

Regain Perspective & Open Creativity Channels

90-minute "Lunch Break or Kids Time" block of time to do more involved errands, grab lunch outside the home, and/or run kids to appointments, etc.

45-minute "Quick Lunch Break"

20-minute "Get Out! Break" to get outside and do something else for just enough time to get your mind out of a rut.

10-minute "Biology & Caffeination Break" <self-explanatory>

"Life Intrudes" Blocks

"Whole Day Gone" for those days when it all comes apart and takes a whole day away, and maybe a trip to the ER.

5-hours "Appointment Hell" block of time for those days when a long appointment/wait-time/mini-disaster eats a whole morning, afternoon, or eats the middle out of a day.

"Variable-per-Family/Kid" — when family-member's/kids' schedules regularly interrupt your day and you have to take them somewhere (e.g., game, lessons, etc.), stay while they do something, and transport them (and their team/friends?) to food or back to school, and eventually home again.

Big Picture

Generally, I tend to organize this kind of R&D work into 24-week long efforts, with 'months' banned from our vocabulary. 'Weeks' are the focus of all thinking, planning, and scheduling. I further prefer to break each effort up into three 8-week long phases. My experience leads me to the conclusion that this structure for our work efforts tends to both focus development efforts well and yet provide the resilience to deal well with the vagaries of scheduling applied research efforts, and the more varied schedule deviations that occur in each of our lives and families.

I'm not sure how seriously to take these ideas, as I and most of the folk I've worked with professionally tend to take their work pretty seriously and enjoy the kinds of work we do. It's FUN! But clearly that's not universal, and I'd be an even bigger fool thinking I could always depend on everyone being a 'self-starter' who really enjoys the challenges we tackle together. Especially when teaming with other organizations who don't share our values. But for now, I'm focusing on just how to coordinate diverse distributed schedules without getting too 'wrapped around that axle' or losing coherence of our distributed work with diverse teams of teams, especially when teaming with other organizations. There ARE limits to asynchronous coordination amongst teams and team members. If nothing else, maybe this can be just an exercise in 'expectations management'? What do you think? What works for you and your teams of teams?

As always, thanks for your time and attention. It's the only true currency that matters IMHO. When it comes to practical economics, the cost of a good full breakfast, or of a week of my time, tend to be my principal metrics. Then again, when not geeking out on tech, I'm usually focused on the human factors. Have a good week!