One of the things I learned at Amazon is how to manage a workload significantly larger than any other place I’ve ever worked at. I understand the reason for it: at Amazon the team that creates the service owns it. That means they are the operators and responders as well as designers and testers.

As a result, senior engineers often have more than one project going on at any given time. So how do you keep track of it all? Well, I have a system of “rituals” or routines that I use. It’s very simple and I’ve taken inspiration from the “Getting Things Done” GTD method, as well as other time management books I’ve read.

I’ll describe the practice, the principles, some tips, and how things could go wrong.

The principles to keep in mind are:

Keep a “Second Brain”

Don’t rely on memory — you will forget something. Write everything down, write notes, draw diagrams, save it.

Keep things in One Place

There’s no point in writing things down if you’re not going to be able to find them when you need them. I keep it organized using a Work Journal with links to specific pages for each project. A project is anything that requires more than one session or one day to complete.

Keep a Daily Journal

I check my daily todo list throughout the day. I keep 4 sections: todo for that day, meetings, done, and notes. My done section has links to artifacts I created, or a brief sentence about what I accomplished. “Discovered a root cause for xyz issue” with a relevant link.

Tips for TODO lists:

Give yourself enough context

My todo includes an end goal, success criteria or done criteria depending on the task, a due date, and a specific next step.

Two Minute Rule

If it takes 2 minutes to do it, just do it. I got this from the GTD method. It’s really good.

Make it a habit.

For me, it works better when I plan my day first thing in the morning. Some people prefer to do this at the end of the day to plan the next day.

Reflect and Iterate

If something is not working for me, I figure out what adjustments I need to make. If something didn’t go well that day I write a note to myself explaining what went wrong and what I could do better next time.

How things could go wrong

Too much time on the system

If you’re spending more time on the system than on actual work, simplify.

Too Rigid

You don’t have to follow everything everyone says. Do the thing that works for you.

Don’t over index on the tool

I’ve done this system on Outlook, Notion, Quip Notes and now Microsoft Notes. I’m not going to say it doesn’t matter, but to me, the actual tool is not important. I like it when an application is portable and can sync on all my devices. I like to take notes in a way where I can insert diagrams and code snippets with syntax highlighting, but those are nice to have. I use whatever I can easily get from work.

Conclusion

This is how I keep track of stuff. It is applicable to all things and I’m always learning and applying things here and there.

Further Readings

The 3 books that influenced and helped me the most for time management are:

  • Getting Things Done by David Allen — link GTD is the most successful book of the productivity genre. I do recommend it if you haven’t read it. I first read it when I started college. I recently re-read it on Audible and I can certainly see that all other books are in essence revisiting this book.

  • How to be a Productivity Ninja: Worry Less, Achieve More and Love What You Do. By Graham Allcott — link Recommended at work. It’s a new take on the GTD method. I get my weekly review from here, which I didn’t talk about in this post.

  • Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart — link This is a book published by O’Reilly, the technical books with the animals on the covers. Here I got the concept of rituals and cycles for time management. It seems targeted to my type of work: a person working on multiple projects.