#237 – April 13, 2025
Culture where fixing root causes takes over quick patches
Don’t ever page me
5 minutes by Hugo Brook
Engineers weren’t dedicating enough time to addressing the root causes of pages, preventing recurrence, or automating runbooks for common errors. Hugo identified this as a prioritisation issue and made sure that they will never get paged twice for the same issue.
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3 Buckets of Work Time
6 minutes by Cory Miller
In a reflective piece about restructuring his workday, Cory shares his approach to maintaining productivity while managing a global team from Oklahoma. He categorizes his work into three areas: Conversations, Doing the Work, and Thinking About the Work. As he adapts to leadership changes and balances family responsibilities in his late 40s, Cory aims to build routines that feel energizing rather than constraining, while acknowledging the need to manage his tendency toward overextension and worry.
How to simplify complex decisions by cleaving the facts
11 minutes by Jason Cohen
In this post Jason presents a practical framework for handling complex business decisions by separating upsides from downsides. Instead of circular arguments, Jason recommends focusing primarily on potential upsides while using downsides only as potential veto points. The approach advocates investing heavily in strengths rather than merely fixing weaknesses, and simplifying decisions to no more than three key dimensions to avoid analysis paralysis. This method can be applied across various scenarios from feature prioritization to hiring decisions.
10 Ways to Take Ownership of Your Time
11 minutes by Mike Fisher
In this post Mike discusses various time management techniques and productivity frameworks to help individuals take control of their schedules. He outlines structured approaches like Oliver Burkeman's 3/3/3 method, the Eisenhower Matrix, Pomodoro Technique, and Time Blocking alongside productivity frameworks including GTD, the 2-Minute Rule, and the Seinfeld Strategy. Mike emphasizes that effective time management isn't about cramming more activities into your day, but working smarter by prioritizing important tasks, eliminating multitasking, and aligning efforts with personal goals.
The Precise Language Of Good Management
5 minutes by Stay SaaSy
This article emphasizes the importance of precise language for managers, highlighting how vague communication can lead to misunderstandings and disappointment. It provides practical examples of common imprecise statements about performance assessments, project commitments, and promotions, contrasting them with specific alternatives that set clear expectations. Managers are advised to gather information before responding to questions about team capabilities and to focus on describing actions rather than attributes when giving feedback.
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And the most popular article from the last issue was: