My EOY Reflection Checklist | Hacker News Reader

My EOY Reflection Checklist

boringstartupstuff.com

57 pointsopsgal27 comments

I like this list. On calendars - I wish companies would hire people to manage calendars for teams and orgs. It feels like keeping my calendar defragged is an uphill battle, but one that could be solved at a top level fairly well.

This role does exist. It is called an "administrative assistant" and you see them at most companies above a certain size. The downside is that they will tend to be assigned only to executives above a certain rank.

I'm thinking of it more on an org level though - i.e. have one person who all scheduling goes through, with the expectation that they're continuously optimizing everyone's calendars.

That's a very interesting thought. I don't have the opinion that administrative assistants scale well since the idea of "is this meeting important" is really based on understanding, for the person whose calendar is being managed, what they consider important. As you scale it out to a whole org I would imagine that you end up with the same schedule as before - just now the organizers assistant is talking to your assistant. It might deflect meetings from two people of the same rank at an org, but managers can still drag you into meetings where you add no value nor gain no value.

Maybe the solution would be to auto decline every meeting until the person inviting makes a personal case to you, for why you should attend. Every quarter, decline all reoccurring meetings until the case is re-made ;)

When I used to work in ad agency land, there was typically a role called the "traffic manager", which was sort of like a project manager but for the whole creative department rather than just an individual project or two. They would definitely organise everyone's calendars for them, amongst many other things. It wasn't a job I was terribly envious of, I must say!

Have you tried Clockwise? We have it installed in our G Suite account; it performs decently well.

Enjoyed this, went to share it with colleagues, now browser says "An unexpected error has occurred." Inspecting in Safari, shows a bunch of 502s from, e.g. https://boringstartupstuff.com/_next/data/pkj6CTeFqKqkg3-grf...

Try now! Something weird happened with the dates: https://boringstartupstuff.com/newsletter/nov-24th-2020-fini...

comes right up in Safari, but Chrome (which my colleagues use and I tried/failed at yesterday) is just "Waiting for boringstartupstuff.com" with a blank white screen and a spinner in the tab. If I do a Chrome incognito window, it comes right up.

Probably just because Chrome is cached, good sign that it worked incognito. Feel free to reach out if you see more issues. Thanks for bringing up!

Good list.

My list has devolved to the following over the years: 1. Do I still have a job?

That doesn't seem like nearly enough detail; "do I have a job" is a poor predictor for "will I have a job in 6 months"

That's only if you care about having the same job in 6 months. I could transfer. I could be laid off. Who knows.

What about then, "What am I doing to ensure I can have a job in 6 months?" That could cover a broad number of items: keeping your resume up to date, networking with peers in your industry and other teams, staying sharp with new skills in your field, etc.

Who says I'll want a job in six months? Maybe I'm tired of all the BS and want to live in a van down by the river.

Maybe uncharitable of me, but it seems like you are just trying to throw in some snark to the discussion rather than contribute anything useful about your perspective.

I for one would be interested to hear what you mean by your original comment, but it so far doesn't seem like you are that interested in explaining yourself.

I have become disillusioned by the company I work for, and the industry. After being screwed over and passed over for multiple years, I feel like there's no point in trying to climb the ladder. Why should I try to improve myself for the company's benefit, especially if I'm not going to be rewarded? For reference, I'm a midlevel who has filled the role of senior and even tech lead.

I think the real answer is to improve yourself for your own sake, and with luck those improvements will take you somewhere out of your company or even industry. This is similar to the concept of Scott Adams's Talent Stacking (see https://talentstacking.com/about/).

Maybe I define my self worth outside of my profession. In that case, I wouldn't see additional professional skills as self improvement. If anything, it would be even more of a reason to quit.

Don't you think there are a lot of worthwhile, "non-professional" skills to learn as well? I recently read an article about a programmer who learned woodworking, and summarily quit his job to be a woodworker in some rural area, and loved it!

I'm sure there's a lot out there that might interest you, that could turn into a profession you actually enjoy. Just a thought :)

Like the list and your trello responsibility tasks list definitely gonna steal that. I was thinking around the same like you know every company declare annual report every year. So why I don't declare a personal annual report(PAR) on all things that I did, likes, expectations that were in the beginning of the year, what was accomplished, learnings, life lessons, things that got cancelled.... If one continues to do this consistently do this there won't be many only a few like 35-50 PARs per person depending life expectancy but would be a great collection. The questions in your site can really help my stuff, I hope I can start on this idea.

Thanks for your thoughts! Feel free to let me know how it goes.

Hey OP: Thank you for this. Management Operations is such a neglected field. I've just subscribed.

I'm my consultancy's ops person (we're +20 people), so its nice to see these topics on HN and elsewhere. I look forward to your content continuing.

Aw, thanks! Definitely appreciate the input. Feel free to reach out if there are other topics you'd like to see, contact info in my bio on the website.

Unable to connect for me :(

OP here! Would you mind sharing your browser/OS? Can take a look at that

Actually, I was just able to connect right now – must have been a local network issue.

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