
Let's talk about autonomy at work.

I've noticed the word "autonomy" comes up in conversations about work a lot without a lot of definition of what it is. 

Most people crave some level of autonomy in our jobs. We crave the freedom to make decisions. We crave the ability to work independently. We crave the satisfaction of doing a thing well in a way we chose to do it. 

Even though people often say that they desire autonomy, they don't know how to define it or to find it in the work they're doing.

In this article, we'll explore the ins and outs of autonomy at work and I'll provide some tips for increasing how much autonomy you have.

# What Is Autonomy?

So, what's autonomy all about anyway?

It's all about having the power to make decisions and take action on your own, without somebody critiquing your every move. 

It's about being able to shape your own work and take responsibility for your own actions. 

It's having the power to shape your own work and determine how best to achieve your goals. 

In an autonomous work environment done right, employees have a sense of control over their own work and can take responsibility for their actions.

Pretty sweet, right?

# What Isn't Autonomy?

But,  wait – autonomy isn't the same as being completely on your own. 

Autonomy also doesn't mean "do whatever you want".

There are still rules and boundaries (constraints) in place to make sure a business runs smoothly and autonomy has to work within those rules and constraints. 

Autonomy is not the same thing as being able to work alone, either. 

Autonomy is bound by your skills and tools. If you haven't developed mastery in the role you hold, your autonomy is limited to how much you're capable of doing.

You can have all the autonomy in the world, but that doesn't mean you can't ask for help when you need it. In fact, working together increases your ability to autonomous and generally makes the output of your work better.

# Do You Have Autonomy at Work?
So, why might you feel like you don't have autonomy? 

There are a few common reasons people don't feel like they have autonomy at work:
- You feel like your boss doesn't trust you 
- You're being micromanaged 
- You have to ask permission for everything you do
- You don't feel like you have the skills or resources to take on tasks by yourself

# How To Increase Autonomy (Without Permission)
You may feel like you can't have more autonomy at work, but fear not, my friend – there are ways to increase your autonomy. 

It's important that you start to notice where you _want_ autonomy and where you can _get_ autonomy.

Knowing where you want autonomy and where you're not getting it means you can start to create a plan of small steps to move towards the level of autonomy you want.

Once you've figured out the level of autonomy you want, schedule some time with your manager and making sure you're on the same page about what level of autonomy you want, what that looks like and what expectations for success look like for your manager. 

Oftentimes, if you can understand the needs your manager has around communication and commitments, you can become better at self-management. Self-management is a great path to autonomy. 

Once you and your manager have agreed that what you want is what you are able to do, don't be afraid to take on new challenges and show off your skills. 

And hey, if you need to brush up on those skills, there's nothing wrong with seeking out some extra training or growth. 

# Autonomy is Ownership
Remember, autonomy isn't just about doing things your own way – it's about being able to take ownership of your work, feel confident in your abilities and serve the needs of the business. 

So go ahead, take charge and see where a little autonomy takes you!


People talk about autonomy at work, but don't often talk about what it actually is or how to have it.

What Is Autonomy At Work?




The Shopify ["cancel all the meetings" article](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/tech/shopify-meetings/index.html) has taken up a lot of room in my brain since I first read it yesterday.

My first thought was "Hey, that's cool, a bunch of people just got time back, maybe they'll be more effective."

My second thought was "Hey, what was missing about how they communicate that they needed 75,000 hours of meetings?"

This change is a classic example of a dramatic swing in a big system from something most people hate (meetings) that will likely end up in a dramatic swing back to something most people hate (more meetings).

"Why do you think it will swing back?" You ask? 

What happens when you remove thousands of hours of meetings that had _some purpose_ and the way the group communicates required synchronous communication.

When you cancel all these meetings, what fills the gap?

They cleared up "76,000" hours but what if some of those meetings were useful?

Cancelling all the meetings doesn't magically make everyone in the company happy with how they communicate with each other. 

Instead there's now a gaping void of communication and everyone is going to have to scramble and figure out "how do I work in this new system?"

Don't get me wrong, I think most meetings could be replaced with asynchronous tools and processes, but the important part here is that they _weren't_. 

It's feels great to blow away an entire organization's planned meetings, dust off your hands and say "hey, I did a good thing"  but **every existing meeting that matters needs a way to replace what was there or it will just end up on the calendar again.**

I had a few takeaways, from an organizational change management perspective:
- **start small, share what you learn along the way.** You'll be more successful, faster by starting small, finding what works and create a process for reducing the need for meetings. 
- **Strive for communication mastery.** Meetings suck, but absent or unclear communication sucks worse. If you and your team can strengthen your asynchronous communication, you can probably get rid of most of your meetings. 

In practice, getting cozy on my arm chair quarter backing chair, here's what I would have done as a C-Suite making this decision:

- Start with the C-Suite deciding what their least favorite meeting together is and use the second to last meeting slot to discuss why it needed to exist, if the content is still important 
- Use the last meeting slot to determine a few ways they think they can successfully communicate the content asynchronously 
- Test it out for the next few weeks and then asynchronously retrospective what's working and what's not 
- Bonus points: do it in a public channel in the organization's communication tool of choice and model the process
- Pick another meeting to cancel and do the same process

The above will take more work than canceling all meetings at once, but it's principled in its approach and it creates an alternative space for the communication to continue. 

# Try Using Murmur

A small plug:

[Murmur](https://murmur.com) is an asynchronous decision making platform and it's _built_ to make the process above delightful. You can use Murmur to propose this idea, get consent from the group asynchronously and once you've all decided you want to do it, it will nudge you in the future about how it's going.

As an alternative to using those two last meetings, cancel them instead and propose a decision to "Cancel Meeting X" in [Murmur](https://murmur.com) and propose an agreement called "How we Communicate". 


Canceling all your meetings sounds great but what fills the communication void it creates?

Maybe Don't Just Cancel 75,000 Hours of Meetings

# Highlights
- In October 2020, I'm joining [[Aaron Dignan]] and [[Ariel Norling]] as the founding engineer to build Murmur.
- [[Murmur]] Is a platform for creating working agreements within teams  asynchronously and collaboratively.
- We're creating a self-organizing and self-managing team. 

On Tuesday, October 13th, I'll be joining the team (as hire #2) at Murmur to build collaborative software to help teams decide how they're going to work together. We're doing this by guiding them through the process of making working agreements where everyone consents if it's safe to try.

[Aaron Dignan](https://aarondignan.com) (author of [Brave New Work](https://www.bravenewwork.com/) and Founder of [The Ready](https://theready.com/)) reached out to me to talk about [[Self Management]] a few weeks ago and he introduced me to the vision for Murmur. When he asked me "what do you think?" the first thought in my mind was "my whole adult life has led me to this moment of saying 'this was what I was made to do.'".

Thankfully, Aaron thought so too, because he asked me if building the Murmur platform was something I wanted to be a part of! As an alternative, he gave me the opportunity to simply give advice about how I would build the software. If I did decide to join, the decisions would be the ones I'd want to make anyways.

I wasn't _looking_ for something new, in fact, I was preparing to dig into my path at Webflow deeper doing this same type of work, but within teams rather than as software. Because I wasn't looking, I had mixed emotions: I knew this was a rare opportunity that I would regret not taking but I had also started to settle in to making an impact at Webflow with people I enjoy working with on a product I think will also change the future of innovation.

After a week of grappling, I told Aaron that I'm all in.

I'm excited to be a part of the inception of Murmur and excited to see what's to come in building software to help teams decide how to work together in a way that puts humans at the center of the process.

# Summary

**Where are you headed?**

A startup called [Murmur](https://murmur.com).

**What will you be doing?**

Building a platform for teams to collaborate on how they decide to work together. I'll be involved in designing and building the software and helping to create a team.

**What's interesting about it?**

- This is a stepping stone to helping teams and companies move towards self-organizing. One of my greatest passions at work is helping teams do the meta work of deciding how they work together, work on process improvement and increase clarity.
- This platform _doesn't exist_ today. I'll be involved in helping get the software topology and software systems up and running and building out a team to help it start and help it scale.
- This will be the second self-organizing structured organization I've been a part of but the first one where there's someone who knows what works and what doesn't and how to figure out what works and what doesn't in a way that makes me confident we'll do it the most authentic way.

**What's scary about it?**

As always, I'll reach for an analogy involving canoes...

Every time I've changed jobs in the past, I've brought my canoe to an existing reservoir and helped clean it up or make it better, but the hole was dug and the water was there.

With Murmur, I'm coming into a plot of land, a map, a blueprint and some shovels and the reservoir has to be dug and filled. For me, that comes with a great amount of responsibility.



I'm embarking on a new chapter of life: joining Murmur, a platform that will change the future of work.

Joining Murmur


**_The most important part of being a successful contributor on a distributed team is being equipped with the right tools and frameworks to help you transition into this new paradigm._**

# My Distributed Journey

Before working from home, I'd worked at a number of in-office jobs, the last of which was working on Software at Zappos. I had a 30 minute commute both ways to an open-office where I would sit down at my desk around 9AM, interact with peers almost all day, clock out around 5:30 or 6 and drive again for 30 minutes.

I started working from home in 2015 for Walmart Labs on a fully distributed team, building software for other teams to use. I transitioned into a job where I could wake up whenever I wanted (which didn't change), my commute was 15 seconds to a guest bedroom in our house, where no one else knew (nor did they care, it turned out) what my hours were, where no one knew if I decided to wear jammies and by the end of the day, I could be confident I didn't have to worry about sitting in traffic.

If you go into a change like this unprepared, it's easy to end up confused, feeling lost and even in a place where you think that this "remote thing" isn't for you. Despite that feeling, I challenge you to consider some tips and techniques I've found to help keep me grounded and help me do my best work and stay on task without also sacrificing my personal life.

**The tips that I've found to be most useful for my success and mental health are:**

- **Maintain your personal routines**
- **Connect virtually with co-workers as often as possible**
- **Start your week and your day with a concrete plan**
- **Create a dedicated workspace**
- **Stop Working When You Should Stop**

# Tip 1: Maintain Your Personal Routines

Most people think that their greatest temptation when working from home will be _not_ to work, however, I've found that my temptation is to _keep_ working all the time. The best way you can equip yourself for either temptation is to **create and maintain _personal_ routines and rituals that bookend when you want your day to start and end**.

Here's what my routine looks like:


- I wake up and make a coffee between 5:30-6AM.
- I write or pursue a hobby (reading or 3d printing) for an hour or two before my daughter wakes up.
- I make my daughter her breakfast.
- I walk the dogs.
- I take a shower and get dressed for work.
- I make another coffee, fill up my water bottle, give my family a kiss and head to my office.
- I take my mouse and keyboard out of their box, turn them on, turn on my monitor and...
- START WORK...and work until END WORK.
- I turn off my monitor, turn off my external mouse and keyboard and put them in a box. I always try to leave my desk "pristine".
- I go downstairs and have dinner with my family.
- I do bedtime routine with my daughter.
- I walk the dogs.

As you can see, my day is bookended with things I care about and _can't_ skip. Find the things that matter to you and bookend your day with those so that you know "it's time to start work" and "it's time to wrap up work".

**Note: You may think you don't already have rituals or routines, but things like "eating breakfast" and "showering" are good anchors for setting up rituals and routines to fill the time you may get back from no longer having a long commute. It's easy to think "I can sleep in now!" but the best thing you can do to be successful is to find ways to fill that newly acquired time. It may be spending time reading, exercising, finding a new hobby or if you have a family, spending time with them.**

# Tip 2: Connect Virtually with Co-Workers As Often As Possible

If you're a knowledge worker that's used to putting on a pair of headphones at the beginning of the day and hacking away on the computer by yourself, you may think work from home is going to give you that much more time to hack away at stuff. Now that you're work from home though, there are probably a lot of opportunities you once had in an office to collaborate or socialize that's now been stripped from you.

## Setup Pair Programming/Maker Sessions

Whatever you work on, you're probably not in a situation where you need to do it alone, so check in with a co-worker and ask them if you can schedule some time to pair on something. As a developer, I setup 4-5 sessions a week that last anywhere from 2-5 hours (it's important to be aware of when you or your pairing partner have hit a wall, this kind of work is mentally a lot more taxing than it is when you work alone). In most roles, there are opportunities to collaborate with a teammate or someone else in the organization on work that either of you are working on. This time doubles as an opportunity to interact with others outside of your neighbors/roommates/family.

## 10% Time

If your company gives you 10% time, this is a great time to try to connect with someone you may not normally cross paths with. It's also a great way to use that time to interact. 10% time is an opportunity for you to step outside of your daily role/routine/tasks and focus on things like writing, finding creative ways to use existing tools or building tools. You can also start a book club with some co-workers and use 10% time to have a weekly zoom where you talk about what you're reading. If you do this, a great way to keep it up is to make sure that you make it a ritual, by doing it the same time every week and putting it on people's calendars.

## Team Building

One of the things I've done that I've found to be a lot of fun, especially at companies where team building is encouraged, is to play boardgames online together over Zoom.

If you're not using it now, **talk to your company about investing in Zoom**.

# Tip 3: Start Your Week and Your Day with a Concrete Plan

When I worked in an office it was common for someone to catch me within the first 30 minutes of my day and ask me to help with something reactive. If you're in this boat, you'll find that Slack (or whatever tool your company uses for communication) is now the avenue people will use to "tap you on the shoulder". Working from home has a happy side effect of giving _you_ the ability to control your day.

The best way to control your day: plan at the end of the day every day.

At the end of the day every day, I write down what I _plan to do tomorrow_. I write it down with as much concrete detail as possible. If you work on a team that uses sprints or iterations or some version of long-term (weekly or bi-weekly planning), use your planned tasks to determine what you'll do tomorrow and do it in detail based on where you left off today. I usually write down one big task and 2-3 little tasks.

When you sit down at your desk (more on this coming up), _just do what you had planned_. Don't open Slack. Don't check your email. Don't open Twitter. **Open the tool you use for doing work and check off your tasks you had planned.**

Something really amazing happens when you plan your day and don't have an easy way for people to interrupt you: you find yourself done with everything you planned to do and sometimes more than you planned in half the time it would've taken you in the office.

# Tip 4: Create a Dedicated Workspace

Having a dedicated workspace has been critical in working from home. Every time my wife and I have moved, we've looked for a place that has a room that I can use as a dedicated office. As you start to work from home and find that you're using video conferencing more frequently or find that your roommates/family are now a part of your "daily office", you'll find that those little interruptions can add up in a big way.

If you have the luxury of an extra room that's not your bedroom or a main throughfair during the day, use that room as your workspace.

## Get a Good Desk

An adjustable desk and a comfy chair can go a long way.

I've had a few desks (I built my first two. It seemed cool at the time, but trust me, invest in a desk from people who specialize in this) but I've found the [Autonomous AI standing desk](https://www.autonomous.ai/standing-desks/smartdesk-2-home) or the [Husky adustable workbench](https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-52-in-Adjustable-Height-Workbench-Table-with-2-Drawers-in-White-HOLT5202BJ1/307723266?) to be two I enjoy using.

## Get a Good Chair

As for chairs, I have _only ever owned_ a [Herman Miller Sayl](https://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/office-chairs/sayl-chairs/). Don't be cheap on your chair. Your butt's in it most of the day and your back will thank you if you spend the time and money finding the right one for you.

## Anything is Better Than Your Bed

**Whatever you do, don't work from bed.**

If you have a family or roommates, you're probably going to be tempted to campout in your bedroom, but beware of this because of the challenge you'll face of feeling like life starts to blend together. If you absolutely have to use your bedroom, still get a desk and find a "shutdown ritual" that helps remind you that you are no longer at work, you are at life.

If you don't have the luxury of an extra room, try out getting a [screen for a desk](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/bekant-screen-for-desk-gray-70268811/), a [room divider](https://www.amazon.com/ACME-3-Panel-Wooden-Screen-Cherry/dp/B002WGJHB8/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1583705663&refinements=p_36%3A1253524011&s=home-garden&sr=1-2) or my favorite [an IKEA Kallax bookshelf that you can mount in the middle of a room](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/kallax-shelf-unit-white-30275861/).

# Tip 5: Stop Working When You Should Stop

As I mentioned in a previous tip: you're probably going to find that you actually get _a lot more done_ than you used to in an office. This probably means that you'll be done a lot earlier in your day than you used to. In the first weeks and months, be kind to yourself and "clock out" when you're done. I can't tell you how many days I have wasted by trying to squeeze out a little bit more in the name of "I'm supposed to be butt's in seat until 5PM" when my brain was mush and I'd already conquered the day early on.

This new way of working is _amazing_ and the dopamine hit you'll get from increased effectiveness is going to think you're actually being more efficient. Don't trick yourself into thinking that you are a robot and you have increased efficiency (humans are terrible at efficiency, our greatest strength is our ability to be effective).

# Work Well. Live Well. Don't Burn Out.

Long-term working from home (or remote...or distributed, whatever you call it) has been one of the greatest things to happen to me in terms of being an effective contributor, a balanced person and as someone who wants to enjoy the fruits of having family. I see my wife and daughter at the beginning of every day, at lunch and I have dinner and do bedtime routine with them every night. I am so grateful to have that time back to invest it in the people I care about.

If you're in a position where you're working from home, I'd encourage you, try out these tips, be "present" at work when you're at work, be present at home when you're not at work and experiment with different tips and techniques yourself to find the balance you want out of life.


Tips that I've found to help me be successful in my transition into remote work, working from home.

Tips For Being Successful at Working From Home Long-Term

In a Gartner article on [how peer feedback boosts employee performance](https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/peer-feedback-boosts-employee-performance/), Jessica Knight, research director at Gartner, said "High-quality peer input has become an essential part of effective performance feedback".

Every company I've worked for—Zappos, Walmart Labs and Webflow—in the past 8 years has incorporated peer feedback in the annual performance review (Webflow is the only one that doesn't tie compensation to this feedback).

For high performers and contributors who interact with others across an organization this can be a really great way to receive feedback, but the hidden superpower for people in these roles is that they have the ability to _give_ insightful feedback.

One of the most important changes I made to how I give feedback was **to start keeping notes for all of the peers I interact with through the year, then to reflect on and summarize those to write my peer feedback.**

# Step 1: Keep Notes Through the Year

Immediately after interacting with someone for the first time, I create a file in a folder in Dropbox called `people` with that person's name in it and use a text expander snippet to add a list item for that interaction. As an example, if I need help with a particular feature I don't know a lot about from a peer named "Jim Johns", I would created a file in Dropbox called `people/jim-johns.md` with the following:


```md
# Summary

# Notes

- **2020-02-21T13:04** I needed some help with the slider element feature and Jane said "Jim knows a lot about it". Jim was really helpful and the way he walked through the internals of the feature felt like we were exploring it together and he was letting me learn it and ask questions. I was really comfortable asking questions that felt silly because he often responded to my questions by first saying "great question!".
```

Some things to note about the above example:
- **I keep a timestamp (format: [year]-[month]-[day]T[hour]:[minute]).** I find the timestamp to be helpful because it helps me zoom out and if I have notes that are negative, I can look at my journal and see how _I_ was feeling that day. I find that including "I was having a hard day" also helps to show that sometimes "negative" feedback comes from where I was that day and give context that "maybe this was just me on that day" if I have any negative feedback.
- **I write about _what_ our interaction was about.** The what's important to me because it will help me recall the situation better when I'm summarizing and will likely help the person I'm giving feedback to recall specific situations.
- **I write how the interaction made me feel.** How I felt during/afterwards is important because it helps express what behaviors make me feel special. I generally only write about the behaviors that were positive (if I experienced behaviors that made me feel hurt or frustrated, I try to address that as soon as it happens. I've yet to have an interaction that ended negatively that repeated itself.)
- **I include the person who connected us**. I believe connectors are critical contributors at work. Whenever I include the connector, it makes it easier to search the whole directory for people's names if they request feedback. If I find Jane's name numerous times, I can add that to the summary that I keep for her.

# Step 2: Review and Summarize

Once I have 4-5 interactions, I'll try to summarize feedback into my `# Summary` section. I don't usually wait until peer feedback time to do this, but I usually do it when I can see that there are patterns of strengths, behaviors and qualities of a person that stand out. I also add a ⭐to a few of the interactions that I want to highlight to my feedback. I find specific examples as a good way to indicate I genuinely mean what I wrote in the summary.

# Step 3: Identify Opportunities for Growth

There are always opportunities for a person to grow. Sometimes they'll feel negative, but other times it'll be opportunities around skills/strengths an individual has that they want to refine/get better at. A really great way to share this feedback is to find any interactions where you caught a glimmer of something _stellar_ that you think that person has an opportunity to do more of that will also help them shine.

# Give Awesome Peer Feedback

For the past 4 years I have had to give anywhere between 12-15 peer reviews per cycle and this process of capturing over time and collating at review time has made giving feedback an enriching, stress-free experience!

This is also helpful for people who you haven't interacted with in a long time or don't interact with that frequently. This is a wonderful gift to those people because it shows you cared enough to be prepared and that you, someone they chose to request feedback from, took the time to reflect on your interactions with them.

I should also note that people have asked me for feedback outside of these cycles and when they do, it makes it a lot easier to give that feedback because I've already done the work to collect my thoughts!

[Thanks to David Hoang for inspiring me to write this post. His twitter post recommending managers keep a document on "what they've done" nudged me to write about the documents I keep to give awesome peer feedback.](https://twitter.com/davidhoang/status/1230886326561492994)


Many companies are incorporating peer feedback into performance reviews. Here's how I prepare to give awesome peer feedback.

How to Give Awesome Peer Feedback


Friction is a force that affects our ability to do things. 

If you want to add good habits, reduce friction that makes those habits hard to do.

If you want to remove bad habits, create friction that makes those habits less easy to do. 

Do you spend to much money online? Delete your saved credit cards and keep your wallet or purse far out of reach. 

Do you spend to much time surfing social media? Delete your apps and only log on through an Incognito window for 10 minutes, then close the window. Better yet, use a tool like [[Apple Screentime Settings]]

Friction is a powerful force to helping us shape the way we live our lives. If it's used to intentionally design habits, it becomes a leverage point to become the person you want to be.


How I think about friction as a property of my habits.

Friction - A Secret Tool for Successful Habits

I am _not a_ remote worker, **I am a part of a distributed team.**

The word “remote” is loaded with negative baggage: something or someone that’s far away, distant; isolated. Something or someone that’s out of touch with the reality of how things really are.

As a software engineer, when I think about the term “remote”, I think about accessing a machine that’s out of sight, but one in which I can control. It’s uni-directional, communication is often flaky at best and creates frustration in the ability to be effective.

The term “remote” focuses on _where the team member is_ . It doesn’t address _what_ needs to be done or _how_ to do it. The _where_ is **totally irrelevant to the work.**

The term “distributed,” however, naturally lends itself to thinking about **what needs to be done and how we go about doing it together.**

Communication on a distributed team isn’t uni-directional, it’s not even bi-directional, it’s **n-directional** , as each individual now decides how they collectively work towards a common purpose.

An organization shifting from having remote workers to **the** **distributed model helps teams transcend the “remote vs in-office” mentality**. In a remote model, it’s common for those who are in an office (which may very well be remote from the home office) to ask, “why does that person get to work from home (or co-working space) and I have to be in the office?” It’s also common that a remote worker feels they’re left out of the loop because communication is done in person.

Shifting from thinking about people as “remote” to teams being distributed teams allows us to streamline communication, create stronger connections, expand the candidates we hire so we find the best fit for our teams, not just “local” talent.

**The distributed team paradigm focuses on...**

- _how_ we work being the driving force to our success (not _where_ we work)
- goals being concrete and achievable
- communication being clear and focused
- individual self-management equally contributing to the team’s success

  **The distributed team paradigm is _not..._**

- an opportunity to shirk responsibility
- a way to get out of being a part of a group
- the chance to get out of meetings or being around people

  **The distributed model** allows us to do our best work when our bodies and minds are most optimal, rather than feeling the need to be “butts in seats from 9–5 to be noticed.” As our technologies become more distributed (as they already have), our _teams_ becoming distributed facilitates our abilities to think of how our software works (and can be better) and how our software works helps us shape the way our teams effectively move our products towards their ultimate purpose.

So this is a call to join us in our journey to eliminate the idea of remote workers and **embrace the idea of distributed teams** . Over the next few months we’ll be posting retrospectives of what we’ve done and how it worked for our teams. We invite you to join us in doing the same and using the tag #distributedteams and sharing what you’ve tried, what worked and what didn’t go so well.

We are not remote. We are not in-office. **We are Distributed.**


The term 'remote' focuses on where the team member is. It doesn’t address what needs to be done or how to do it. The where is totally irrelevant to the work. The term 'distributed', however, naturally lends itself to thinking about what needs to be done and how we go about doing it together. I am not a remote worker, I am a part of a distributed team.

Remote is Dead, Long Live Distributed


**I want to be the best person I ever manage.**

This is a systematic approach at discovering and documenting who I am. Many of the high-level concepts in this document are heavily borrowed from Peter F. Drucker's _Managing Oneself_.

# Introduction

I believe I can be systematically discoverable.

When I left Zappos.com 4 months ago to work with Walmart Labs, there were many aspects of my professional life that changed and these changes catalyzed a movement in me to systematically discover who I was.

- I transitioned from being "required" to be in an office to being fully distributed & outside of an office
- I transitioned from being on a team with a project manager and sprints to a team that was fully autonomous and self-driven, and for a lack of a better term, was continuously delivering
- I transitioned from a reactive sense of responsibility to a proactive thoughtfulness
- I transitioned from the customer being my customer to engineers who served the customer's needs as being my customer

As is true of any new venture, I felt ill-equipped to successfully make these transitions with the toolset I had. By some strange twist of Amazon recommendations, I stumbled onto _Managing Oneself_ by Peter F. Drucker. **This is [one of three books that I recommend to anyone wanting to chart a path for being an impactful and effective person](/essential-books).**

One of the excerpts that stood out most to me was:

> "Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values."

The key to success isn't planning, it's knowing _yourself_.

This documentation is the outflow of me attempting to know myself, in a pragmatic, systematic way, based on insights from _Managing Oneself_.

# Desired Outcomes

There are a few desired outcomes I have for doing this, in descending order of importance:

- **Capturing & Understanding Myself.** Ultimately, this guide is for me. I want to have an understanding of myself so I can make better, more prudent decisions based on what I've discovered. Whether it's "should I take this professional opportunity" or "should I engage in this in my freetime", this document and systematic discovery should guide me. If no one else ever looked at it, it would still be worthwhile.

- **Sharing Myself with Peers & Future Peers.** I know that if I work with (or for) someone directly, I want them to be the kind of person who wants to know these topics about me. I want to provide as much information as I can about myself so that I'm (1) a respected and impactful peer, (2) effective in the work where I collaborate and (3) available to be used for the clearly defined strengths, in the method that I do it best, while fully aligned with my values.

- **Sharing The Framework with Others Like Myself.** When I realized this project was a priority, I had no idea where to start...even before I realized it was a priority, I put off making it a priority for that very reason. I want to provide not only what I find about _myself_ by using this framework, but the framework itself. It would be exciting for me to have peers who say, "I took a systematic approach at documenting myself too!" If this document can help one other person, that is a huge win for me.

# Framework

The framework is simple, and as I said before, is heavily borrowed from _Managing Oneself_. As the book itself is really more of a long-form essay (you can find a free [pdf copy here](https://www.usb.ac.za/Common/Pdfs/usb-career-center/articles/HBR%20Managing%20Oneself.pdf)), this is an abstraction of what Drucker suggests any thought-worker should know about themselves and what process I went through to actually figure these things out.

## Strengths, Method of Performing & Values

The first task Drucker recommends is to answer the following questions:

- What are my Strengths?
- How Do I Perform?
- What Are My Values?

###  What Are My Strengths?

This one can be _really_ hard to figure out on your own, fortunately, there's a framework that exists to help you do that already!

I used [StrengthsFinder 2.0](https://strengths.gallup.com/110440/About-StrengthsFinder-20.aspx). If you buy the book, there's a code to take the StrengthsFinder assessment in the back and IMO, the introduction is worth the price of the book and the rest of the book makes a great reference after you've taken the assessment.

You can see the answer to ["What are My Strengths?" here.](/strengths)

###  How Do I Perform?

There are two questions here:

- Am I a Reader or Listener?
- How Do I Learn?

The first one is an easier question to answer: think about the times you've solved a problem or created a mental model of something. Did you do it by reading from texts and documentation or did you do it by having a conversation with yourself and others?

How Do I Learn was a little trickier, so I deferred to the experts and found a questionnaire on [vark-learn.com](https://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/). It's a free test and the feedback is given to you on a scale for four categories (VARK):

- Visual
- Aural
- Reading/Writing
- Kinisthetic

Once you've taken the questionnaire and get your feedback, there's lots of great information on:

1. how to intake information
2. how to successfully take notes and
3. how to successfully perform in any test, assignment or examination.

I think 3 could also be general output, as I don't / haven't done any of those 3 tasks in a long time, but I believe how to best output would be great for preparing for meetings, deep-dives & presentations.

Taking this assessment was really helpful in giving me the information I need to know how I consume information to best perform at work and explained a lot about why I do my best work when I interact with people.

## What Are My Values?

This was probably the _trickiest_ one of all because there's no "discovery" framework that I could find that made it really easy to answer questions and get a response with answers about who you are, so I decided to do a self-inventory over time of what really mattered to me in the moment.

For 3 weeks every time I felt excited about something or really frustrated about something, I'd write it down. Whether that was at work or at home, I'd think about the "event" and write down some abstraction about what it exemplified.

As an example let's take "Do. Document. Distribute. Automate": Whenever I was able to automate a process that I used to do by hand, it'd put me on top of the world, so I wrote down "automate". Automation, however, was not the whole picture, it was the ability to start with something and work through the process of documenting it, having others help with it and eventually automating it so we could do _other things_ that were _more important_.

I did this for around 30 different phrases and then sat with those, removed many and prioritized the others as "inside out", meaning the values that impacted other values were at the top. "God foremost, Family first" is the lens through which everything els is filtered. After that "Glow In The Dark" because if I wasn't pursuing a life where I was glowing in the dark, the rest didn't matter.

# Final Thoughts

Using this framework to discover who I am has empowered me with one of the most important tools I could ever have: **To know myself.**

Knowing myself and having it documented allows me to revisit it so that I can grow in my strengths, challenge my values and use how I perform to be better in all areas of life. It allows me to give my current and future peers a look into who I am so they can decide if I'm a good fit for their team or organization and **give others a recipe for discovering who they are so they can _glow in the dark_.**


This is a systematic approach at applying 'Managing Oneself' to my life. Many of the high-level concepts in this document are heavily borrowed from Peter F. Drucker's Managing Oneself.

A Systematic Approach to Managing Oneself


[As I'm leaving Zappos to go to Walmart Labs](/2015/07/walmart-labs), I've been reflecting on some of the great qualities I appreciated over the years. One of the qualities that comes to mind over and over is the value people put on celebrating employees for their time, effort and work.

In this post, I'm going to highlight 6 ways that have resonated with me most. The crazy thing is, they have nothing to do with compensation and everything to do with **letting people know they're valued**.

![[1333490B-2B2B-48E7-B95E-69CFD8C242D9.jpeg]]
# Welcome Them During New Hire Graduation

When you join Zappos, _generally_ you go straight into New Hire Training: a month long endeavour to learn about the company history and get a better grasp on _our_ customer. On the last day of New Hire Training, we have a graduation where Zapponians pack the room, bring noise makers and hoot and holler for the new team members that will join their teams on the following Monday.

When I joined Zappos, I was on a team called "FEZ" (Frontend @ Zappos) and it's customary to give every new FEZZER a FEZ hat. I still have mine and plan on keeping it even though my time with Zappos is over.

I'm not advocating for a month long training course for all new employees, but having a big batch of employees start on the same day of the week/month and welcoming them with a big group of people is a really great first experience.

# Celebrate their anniversary

During New Hire Training, you get a temporary license plate to hang over your desk and Zappos honors your first year by replacing your temporary license plate with a real license plate with your name on it. Most teams will go to lunch to celebrate an anniversary and every anniversary generally comes with some sort of swag. Also...cake. Every anniversary comes with cake and a big shout across the floor: "Hey everybody, it's [fill in the blank]'s 5 year anniversary today!"

# Celebrate their hard work

This may seem like a no brainer, but it's really easy to glaze over celebrating hard work. In my opinion (and in my experience), this isn't done very well at a high level at Zappos, but leadership within my department has always done a great job of celebrating the work we've done.

It makes it a lot easier to get through the muck when you know that the people asking you to do it care.

**Note: Even if the work doesn't result in the high level desired outcome, it doesn't mean the people didn't do the best they could with the tools you gave them, so don't use "they didn't meet the results" as an excuse.**

# Co-worker Bonuses

...because your peers are the people who know who's working hard.

This one is probably my favorite: At Zappos everyone has a \$50 co-worker bonus to award to someone (per month) who's "Wowed" them. You may think to yourself, "that seems gameable!" but I think it's the most under-utilized tool we have. One of my favorite things to do is to give co-worker bonuses to somebody who's pushed hard to wow their team. When I receive them, it's one of the best ways for me to feel validated in the work that I've done.

# Ask them what problems they're facing...and do something about it

I'm getting on a high horse with this one: I've had some really amazing conversations with leadership for my teams and Tech and seen some great changes.

If a leader says, "what's holding you back?" or "what problems are you facing with xyz?" and an employee says, "abc is a problem." **do something about abc.**

# Sprint Awards

My team does two week sprints (which is a "regular, repeatable work cycle") and at the end of every sprint, someone's given the sprint award based on team nominations followed by a vote. We usually get a plush character (in the past we've had Luigi and Bowser, currently we have Stuart the Minion) and the winner gets to keep it on their desk for the sprint.

It might sound kind of silly (and it is because my team is awesome like that) but it's a great reminder that the team appreciates that individual. If you're on a team but you don't have a regular "cycle" for work, you could still have a 2 week celebration where a team member is awarded with a "we love you, you're awesome." award.

![[6D04DBD9-3736-4B84-9E88-574E61B68834.jpeg]]
# A Final Thought on The Weight of Leadership

One major takeaway here is that if you're a leader, your "title" matters for how people are going to receive a lot of these examples. For instance, if you are a CEO and you email an employee to say, "hey, I really appreciate the work you've done" (and mean it), it's probably going to carry a lot more weight than if I (as a peer) did it.

**Even if you're organization is "flat", the more recognized you are as a leader in the organization, the more weight your actions carry.**

_What are some ways you appreciate about how your organization celebrates employees?_


Celebrating your employees can easily one of the best morale boosters for your organization. Here are 5 of the ways Zappos has done that for me.

Celebrate Your Employees

It was 4:30 AM. I knew I had goals for the morning, but I thought to myself, "checking my work email won't hurt. Surely no one has emailed me between 9 PM last night and this morning." The next thing I knew it was 6:30 AM and I'd spent most of my morning reactively responding to work emails.

_Work_ emails.

That morning I knew it was time to declare a separation of work and life...but I had no idea where to even start.

Fortunately, my buddy Thai, a guy who I've looked to for honing my personal operational rigor, had been dealing with the same problem. That same morning we sat and had coffee on the bistro patio at Zappos and had a conversation about how to create that separation. These solutions are directly or indirectly inspired by my conversation with Thai ([He has an awesome blog about learning ruby](https://thaiwood.io/) and is working on a book about [system adminstration with ruby](https://thaiwood.io/books/ruby-for-system-administrators/)).

# Create A Work Uniform

The first key that almost seemed obvious to creating the separation between work and life was **"create a uniform"**. It didn't have to be a "true" uniform just a token that represented that I was "on", I was at work.

Thai worked as an EMT for a while, and one of the things he had to do was to wear a standard uniform. I could see there was a definite case for having some kind of consistent thing that when you put it on, you're at work and when you take it off, you're in your life.

The funny thing is that Zappos practically hires people because they hate uniforms or rules, which might point to why many of my peers either burn out or work so hard that they're just spinning their wheels.

For me, creating a uniform actually turned out to be pretty simple. I found a [silicone wristband](https://www.reminderband.com/) that I keep in the car and as soon as I get to my parking spot at work, I shoot Jackie a text to let her know I'm in the office and done my silicone wristband. I try to take it off as soon as I get back to my car and at the latest when I get to my driveway.

![usb wristbands](https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31SJyHRxumL.jpg) If you're in an industry where you use a USB, there are also some cool [USB wristbands](https://www.amazon.com/Wristband-Flash-Memory-Drive-White/dp/B00HSW85V4/ref=pd_sim_147_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1D1M8X1193AR8Z33V0JH) that could double as a uniform aid and storage solution. I might try this out, because I'm all about minimalist solutions.

An interesting anecdote after practicing "wearing a uniform" for a few weeks: I forgot to take it off one day and I was "tempted" to check my email...and only then did I realize I still had it on! I immediately took it off and forgot to check my email.

# Create A Work Routine

![working from the patio](/img/patio.jpg)

When I get into the office, I have a routine that involves taking the stairs to the second floor to grab a cup of coffee and two bottles of perrier, heading out to the Zappos Cafe patio and writing documentation or working on an internal project and finally making my way up to the 5th floor. I used to do this before team standup (which was at 10 AM), but now that we have a virtual standup (which is going _really_ well), I just try to get to my desk around 10AM instead of just before.

I try really hard not to check my email before 10 AM, so that I can be proactive about the first hour of my day. I find that email is almost always a great way to derail you from the tasks _you've_ decided are important to satisfy someone else's tensions...which keeps you from getting the important stuff done.

At the end of the day, I make some notes about how I spent my day in and how I could have spent it better in [DayOne Journal for Mac](https://dayoneapp.com/). I then shut down all the applications on my work laptop and shut my computer off. I don't turn it on until the next morning when I start my routine over again.

# Timeblocks & Tasklists

I have a set amount of time that I'm willing to work, with buffers on both start and finish and a _reasonable_ list of things I know I need to get done that day. Blocking your time and having a hard limit to how long you'll stay at the office is probably the most important component of all. Being able to create limits is a difficult discipline, but it's one worth doing.

Do I stay late sometimes? Absolutely. A few weeks ago I had to stay well past my normal hard limit four nights a week, but I knew it was coming because of the gravity of the project I was working on. I let Jackie know at the beginning of the week that I was going to be late getting home every night and she was totally fine with it. I'd like to think that it's because I've been better about guarding my time lately.

One last thought on hard limits and breaking them: If you stick to your hard limits, when you do break them, make it count. Choose to stay late for _good_ reasons, otherwise people are going to (both inadvertenly and intentionally) take advantage of that.

# Liberate Your Life From Work

If you've been in the workforce for any period of time, I don't think I need to tell you how hard it can be to separate work and life. It's even harder when you work at a place like Zappos where it's almost expected that they co-exist (happy hours, unofficial events outside of work that may or may not impact how others view your performance, working on "passion" projects on nights and weekends).

If you haven't burnt out already but you're working non-stop, I imagine burn out is close. You don't have to work all the time to be a machine of productivity.

You might be thinking to yourself, "this guy is an idiot, he has no idea what he's talking about." I, myself, have been there. That's okay. I think there are seasons when we just go full-throttle and we can handle burning the candle at both ends (and those are the seasons we should be chasing the hustle). But I'd like to encourage you, that when you do hit your wall, that you come back and revisit these keys for work-life balance and try and implement at least one of them.

_So what about you? Do you have triggers for how to separate your work/life balance? Do you think work/life balance is bunk in the first place? I'd love to hear your thoughts!_


If you haven't burnt out already but you're working non-stop, I imagine burn out is close. These are the steps I took to get my life back.

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