How I work

A communications readme is a great and easy way to share your preferred ways of working with your colleagues. It removes ambiguities and helps to improve relationships. 🤝

such documents are always a work-in-progress so consider this a living document. I’m always open to feedback about what’s helpful and what isn’t in here.

Async by default

  • I prefer to work async by default, sync when necessary - such as pair programming, debugging, brainstorm sessions, helping unblock someone
  • this may sometimes mean my work hours are not the same as yours, so please don’t feel pressured to respond to my queries outside of your work hours.
  • True insight comes when I’m not in a sync environment. This means I often take notes while walking, gyming, shower, and many other places outside of the usual work environment. It’s easier to connect and put thoughts together after letting things ponder for a bit.
  • Async by default creates artifacts (written documents, diagrams, and other illustrative stuff) that others can refer to in the future, preserving institutional knowledge & context beyond one or a few people’s heads

I believe that writing is a forcing function for clarity in thinking. So, I write a lot.

Flow state & uninterrupted time

  • I’m most effective with large blocks of uninterrupted time, because of that, it may seem like I’m not a fan of meetings, and will opt for async communication as default. This seems to work well when paired with ad-hoc meetings
  • I do not like to multi-task, context switching is expensive for me as it takes quite some effort for me to transition into a task. While I have gotten better at it, I still tend to stay away. That’s why I like to start and take tasks to completion before taking on new stuff.

Notifications off by default

Managing energy vs time

  • While I find routine important, I find myself being more effective when I manage my energy, as opposed to time. This may often result in inconsistent working hours. Hence the prefernce for an async by default style.

Meetings

  • This also means I don’t expect myself to write much code on meeting heavy days like Wednesdays, because I know meetings sap quite a bit of energy out of me, and fragment the day into unusable time chunks for me.

Downtime

I believe in “clean” downtime, as in: time off where you go firmly offline work-wise. Make sure you spend enough of your vacation days this way; it’s valuable, healthy, and important.

I endorse this statement 100%. I don’t have slack on my phone, so when I’m AFK without the laptops, I’m truly away.

Learning

  • I deeply value learning time, as it allows me to be self-indulgent, and grow professionally, as a lot of the concepts are transferable to the workplace. it also alleviates the feeling of burn out, because it’s the kind of work that’s fully in my control.
  • Important for a sustainable career imo
  • Loving the hackathon Fridays!

WIP, Early & Often Collaboration

I’m happy to see messy or work-in-progress ideas or materials as we get there

Fun facts

  • Big music fan! One of my serious hobbies is curating music, always happy to chat music. I’m curating a dub techno playlist/mix while writing this doc :)
  • I love sim racing, I’m currently playing Dirt Rally 2

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