Mar 11, 2021
2 min read
This is how I work
Like many people, I have my own working patterns and behaviours. I don’t expect others to operate in the same way. For example, I might send an email or a Slack message early in the morning or late at night, but I don’t expect a response outside ‘office hours’.
Some of these behaviours are due to the pandemic and working entirely from home, some are just my personal idiosyncrasy.
- I like to take a long lunch break — 90 minutes if I can, rarely less than an hour.
- 5pm to 8pm is family time: picking my daughters up from school and nursery, getting them ready for bed, dinner with my wife.
- If I want to focus on something I switch off Outlook and Slack and any other messaging tools.
- I really support the idea of 25 minutes and 45 minutes as default meeting durations instead of 30 minutes and 60 minutes. But Microsoft Outlook does not make this easy. I’d welcome tips on this — tweet me.
- I respect people’s time. I make every effort to be punctual for meetings and to finish them by the time I said they’d finish.
- I often work and send messages early in the morning and late at night.
- I never expect an immediate response to a question. If I want a quick response, I’ll say so.
- I will never preface an email subject line with “URGENT! IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED!!!”
- Friday is POETS Day.
