3 ms·

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't

The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working all day. But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed. I haven't figured out how to solve this, other than by spending a lot more time and effort documenting the numerous little things that cause distractions and exposing that in my daily status updates. I can tell that it's still not as convincing to him though. So I often end up finding myself working late in the evenings just to finish the actual work that was scheduled to be done that day, even though I've already spent 8 hours dealing with random issues and helping other team mates with things. I need to find a solution soon before I completely burn out.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day, including learning/decisions. What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there. Could this be helpful?
- remmargorp64 6y ago
  That's essentially what I've been doing, and I've been posting it in our daily status slack channel. I need to do a better job of adding more details, but it's a balancing act between spending time on logging work vs doing work, plus if I'm the only person on the team doing it, it looks weird.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
    I have a public (within the company) github repo called "worklog" where everyone can put theirs (it's by name), one file per year. I usually have 4-5 lines per day, where some days have 15 (rare, but there are those big days). I don't give the report in slack, since github has track of when stuff was committed (I commit at the end of the day), if people need it, it's on github. It's great for standups, because I usually forget what I did yesterday. It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated! Last but not least, I capture breakthrougs and decisions in there, as well as learning, so I can refer to it various months later and tell people exactly what I was doing a certain date. At some point people asked "why this wasn't already done, what were you doing in August last year"... And I was able to clearly explain what I was doing in August and why things were not prioritized. Overall, great win! Just to clarify, I didn't come up with this idea myself, it was suggested to me on the Eventide Slack https://eventide-project.org/#community-section https://eventide-project.org/#community-section Apparently it's a common practice in engineering (should be in software engineering too!), I currently follow this log structure: https://github.com/eventide-project/project-status/blob/master/work-log/README.md https://github.com/eventide-project/project-status/blob/mast...
    - johntash 6y ago
      > It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated! Can you explain what you mean by company tax reductions? I'm confused how that relates with keeping a worklog.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
        Specific to Canada, there is a tax reduction thing for the company of this size (the one I work at), that has some specific requirements related to experimenting and tracking time spent on various activities. It can be summarized per day though, this means that I just have to turn in my work-log for this purpose, with no additional effort
0xF013 6y ago
Unless your boss has no idea how software is built, I would argue that this is mostly about how you feel it looks. I combat this by giving a short list during the daily of things I encountered yesterday, thing I’ve tried but didn’t work and sometimes I ask what should I do (drop a part of a feature or get someone’s help) if the thing is due soon. Generally, this is the kind of issue that should be discussed during 1:1 and retro in order to curb the anxiety. And if the boss is a complete tool then looking for jobs or switching to a stoic attitude are in order.
j283736551538 6y ago
Have you considered a tool like Manictime? It keeps track of what's on screen and you can tag stretches of time. Taking a screenshot of timeline plus summary is an easy way to say 'look how long I was working' and implies you have data to respond to a challenge regarding what you were working on. Link: https://www.manictime.com/ https://www.manictime.com/

Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago

I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day, including learning/decisions. What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there. Could this be helpful?

remmargorp64 6y ago
That's essentially what I've been doing, and I've been posting it in our daily status slack channel. I need to do a better job of adding more details, but it's a balancing act between spending time on logging work vs doing work, plus if I'm the only person on the team doing it, it looks weird.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
  I have a public (within the company) github repo called "worklog" where everyone can put theirs (it's by name), one file per year. I usually have 4-5 lines per day, where some days have 15 (rare, but there are those big days). I don't give the report in slack, since github has track of when stuff was committed (I commit at the end of the day), if people need it, it's on github. It's great for standups, because I usually forget what I did yesterday. It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated! Last but not least, I capture breakthrougs and decisions in there, as well as learning, so I can refer to it various months later and tell people exactly what I was doing a certain date. At some point people asked "why this wasn't already done, what were you doing in August last year"... And I was able to clearly explain what I was doing in August and why things were not prioritized. Overall, great win! Just to clarify, I didn't come up with this idea myself, it was suggested to me on the Eventide Slack https://eventide-project.org/#community-section https://eventide-project.org/#community-section Apparently it's a common practice in engineering (should be in software engineering too!), I currently follow this log structure: https://github.com/eventide-project/project-status/blob/master/work-log/README.md https://github.com/eventide-project/project-status/blob/mast...
  - johntash 6y ago
    > It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated! Can you explain what you mean by company tax reductions? I'm confused how that relates with keeping a worklog.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
      Specific to Canada, there is a tax reduction thing for the company of this size (the one I work at), that has some specific requirements related to experimenting and tracking time spent on various activities. It can be summarized per day though, this means that I just have to turn in my work-log for this purpose, with no additional effort

0xF013 6y ago

Unless your boss has no idea how software is built, I would argue that this is mostly about how you feel it looks. I combat this by giving a short list during the daily of things I encountered yesterday, thing I’ve tried but didn’t work and sometimes I ask what should I do (drop a part of a feature or get someone’s help) if the thing is due soon. Generally, this is the kind of issue that should be discussed during 1:1 and retro in order to curb the anxiety. And if the boss is a complete tool then looking for jobs or switching to a stoic attitude are in order.

j283736551538 6y ago

Have you considered a tool like Manictime? It keeps track of what's on screen and you can tag stretches of time. Taking a screenshot of timeline plus summary is an easy way to say 'look how long I was working' and implies you have data to respond to a challenge regarding what you were working on. Link: https://www.manictime.com/ https://www.manictime.com/