Joe's
Digital Garden

Pythefnos Retrospective

There are 26 [[Pythefnos]] Retrospectives in each year conducted on the first Monday of each fortnight. These reviews are my chance to reflect on the last two weeks and make plans for the next two weeks.

They should never take longer than two hours.

  1. Start a new journal entry for the previous fortnight
  2. Review the last 14 days of done tasks in Todo.txt1
  3. Review the last fourteen days of the Bullet Journal and [[Lab Notebook]], Quarterly Goals, Calendar, Work Project Tracking, and any other relevant planning documents
  4. Review the contents of Todo.txt. Add tasks from the next two weeks on the Calendar. Cull and simplify tasks.
  5. Review all projects in Todo.txt. There should be at least one task in each project that is the [[next action]] item in that project.
  6. Review all tasks in Todo.txt by context.
  7. Prioritize the C (do this fortnight) tasks.
  8. Run cat recur.txt >> todo.txt to add recurring chores and meetings to the pythefnos.
  9. Reviewing the priority tasks for the next fortnight identify one goal and 7 - 10 tasks that are "Big Rocks" towards achieving that goal. These should be the bulk of your "MITs" in the [[Nightly Retrospective]].
  10. Squash-merge the fortnight branch of my todo list into master and create a new fortnight branch

The Fortnight Review Journal

The template for the Fortnight Review is constantly evolving. I generally copy the previous journal entry and tailor it to the new fortnight. In general it consists of:

  • A reminder of the Hamming Question, John Jones Questions, and [[Zen Precepts]]
  • One or more bulleted sections where I outline notable accomplishments and events that occurred during the sprint.
  • A section listing what I am on reading, playing or watching
  • A section to answer the question "What am I grateful for this fortnight?"
  • A section to answer the question "What was negative this fortnight?"
  • A table breaking down my [[Monthly Habits]] tracking
  • A table breaking down the total hours spent in each category tracked in TOK
  • A copy of the current quarterly goals
  • My goals for the next fortnight

What single thing, if successfully performed, would have the biggest impact?

Hamming
  • Am I consistent and reliable?
  • Do I understand what meeting expectations means?
  • Can the team reach me when they need me?
  • Does the team know what I'm working on?
  • Do I respond quickly on Slack or Hangouts to proactively resolve issues?
  • Do I project a virtual presence on a daily basis?
Jon Jones, "How to Cut the Tether and Work from Anywhere"

External References

  1. Trapani, Gina. Todo.txt: Future-proof task tracking in a file your control <http://todotxt.org>, Todo.txt. Retrieved 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  2. Raemon. The Hamming Question <https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P5k3PGzebd5yYrYqd/the-hamming-question>, LessWrong. Retrieved 2020-10-18.
  3. Jones, Jon. How to Cut the Tether and work from Anywhere<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka_GEK-u4VE>, GDC. Retrieved October 19, 2017.

Linked References