I was involved in a project that required me to function as both a team lead and at the same time given modules that of a programmer to accomplish.
It seemed very easy during the start of the project. But later on I realized the amount of modules given to me was bigger than anyone’s’ module and had to be accomplished half of the project timeline since it was supposed to be implemented across all modules. Furthermore, I could only spend half of my daily time since I had a lot of other tasks as a team lead.
Boy was that one hell of a job. I was fortunate though that my architect also had the same setup 2 years ago and guided me towards being able to accomplish all of these things.
First and foremost he told me that Focus was the key. Second was Time Management.
Let’s discuss each of them one at a time.
Focus. He specifically advised me that the first four hours of my day was spent in my module. During this time I should be able to have a deep focus on what I was doing and concentrate of kicking in an enormous amount of productivity out of my time.
One thing I noticed in any environment is people tend to chat on their first few hours of the day before actually getting in the mood of working their ass off. This is definitely unacceptable because it brings our productivity down. And everyday if we get to waste a few precious minutes or worse a few hours on nonsense activities then on the long-run it would derail our growth and speed of career progression.
Time Management. This is very important because as a team lead I have to be accessible all the time especially on instances that my expertise is needed. How can I focus and have my 4 hours for the day then?
Simple. I make sure I manage my time and activities well. Before the end of the day I see to it that the most critical issues are taken cared off. I also ensure that the team’s problems and concerns are addressed for the day so that they could work on their respective modules without any issues at the start of the day. Aside from that I make sure to put my Outlook in offline mode and wait until Lunch to read and answer emails. For the most important tasks I see to it that I am logged in all of my IM’s so that people can ping me when something needs to be done. Of course that should have already been taken cared off the day before If done correctly and diligently.
Time flies so fast that we constantly need to put processes in place in order to make the most out of it. If we don’t we’ll just end up wasting more time than we can ever imagine.
Efficient Time Management
