Plan Your Week the Agile way

With Covid-19, the advancement of the tech industry and the development of hybrid teams, the digital overload is increasing and exhausting 85% of the employees. A LinkedIn survey found that: 74% of women say they were very or somewhat stressed for work-related reasons, compared with just 61% of employed male respondents. On a generational level, millennials (ages 25 to 39) were most likely to report work-related stress, at 71%. Conversely, baby boomers (ages 55) were least stressed, at 61%.

A McKinsey research that showed companies that practiced agile methods were better at adjusting during this crisis emphasized the need to become agile to improve productivity. While agile Scrum and Agile practices were designed by and for software developers, the principles can be applied to other industries beyond technology, especially to improve personal productivity.

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While personal productivity can seem daunting, making small changes every week to your routine can drive significant results, reducing your total working time and making it more efficient and best of all, enjoyable. Planning your day in advance will reduce not only stress but also prevent procrastination.

Here are some steps to plan your week and improve your time management:

1)     Decide how many hours you want to work a week; that can be your “sprint” in Scrum terms.

2)     Define three main objectives that you need to accomplish during the week. Simply think of the main tasks or projects you NEED to complete.

3)     Now go to the details: have a list of all the tasks that you want to accomplish (aka backlog in agile)

4)     Time-box in your calendar all the events and meetings that have a due date or specific timeline.

5)     Prioritize those tasks based on the urgency (due date) and importance (are they linked to your objectives?). Sometimes we prioritize based on first in, first out, or based on the urgency of others. Define your own priorities in advance.