Finish Strong: How to Wrap Up The Week for a Productive Monday

🧘🏻‍♂️  A Personal Retrospective

Continuous improvement starts with introspection and mindfulness. Adapt these columns to your needs, for example, an OKR check-in with your team below.

• Look at your board, and check your incomplete tabs.
• Where did I succeed, and where am I blocked?
• Did my team reach its goals this week?
• What feedback did I get this week?
• What can I do to enable others to be successful next week?

On Track

At Risk

New Learning

🧹 Groom Your Backlog

Complete Work In Progress (15-30 minutes)

Reducing stress going into the weekend by completing some almost-done work.

• Clear out a few emails or Slack reminders.
• Review your board for small tasks.
• Add a 'quick-win' label or tag to your tasks so they are easy to find.
• Date due dates for work that's incomplete.
• Clean up your tabs, notes, and your desk.
• Start thinking about the next week and what you must do to meet commitments.

🙅🏻 Reduce the Complexity of Your Tasks (~30 minutes)

Reduce FUD. Add detail to ambiguous tasks, set priority, and add a due date. Reduce stress created by large tasks.

• If you have more than a day left, create a new task for the remaining work that will be needed.
• Leave a final comment on the initial task and link to the new one.
• The new task should be clear, concise, and achievable next week.

🔎 Set Expectations and Be Responsive (~30 minutes)

Predictable outcomes rely on setting expectations even if they are not what someone wants to hear.

• Look for tasks with labels you are interested in. grooming, blocked, quick-win, etc.
• Timebox any new work you discover (5 minutes)
• Move emails that need work into your board and update the thread.
• Front-load new work that’s blocking the team next week.
• Always leave a comment and set or reset expectations.

Plan Your Week Ahead

🗓️ Plan your week (~15 minutes)

• Be honest with yourself and ask these questions when committing to work
• Look at your calendar before you commit. How much focus time do you really have?
• Would it help if I pushed something out to focus on the most important task this week?
• Am I over-committing and under-delivering?