Why a committed late sleeper gets up at 6AM

My last post talked about what we’re doing with Agile Self Development (ASD).  People have asked me what we actually do at our daily meetings.  It’s pretty simply really, at least in concept.

The first thing we do is get coffee.  Especially Andrea.

If you read the last post you know the three daily questions. If you haven’t read it – go do so.  I’ll wait.  If you’re just lazy, here they are again:

• What did I accomplish yesterday?
• What do I plan to accomplish today?
• What are my obstacles?

All of us in the group have goals we’re striving toward.  This first week has been more about setting, defining, and refining those big goals and then figuring out how to break those big, amorphous, overwhelming goals into smaller goals that we can manage and achieve.

For instance, one of my large goals is the whybhm.com project (more on that here).  My initial, small goal is to get 6-8 interviews complete for the project.  The second goal after that is to launch the site with a full design and buildout.  I only had one (ONE!) done as of last week – thanks to Erin. Thus, my answer on Tuesday to the “What do I plan to accomplish today?” question was to contact people on my list for potential interviews for the project.  Guess what I did on Tuesday?

On Wednesday, I came to the meeting and reported that I had in fact scheduled six (SIX!) people to meet and at least talk about the project.  I’ve met with most of those now and accomplished a second interview (thanks Shaun!) with plans to get the others coming up this week. Progress!

Having these daily meetings accomplishes two things. It focuses each of us on those goals and tasks that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle and chaos of our day-to-day life. It also makes us accountable to the others in the group to report our progress each day. If you’re a well disciplined person you can probably make your to-do list and stick to it. The rest of us could use a little peer pressure.