Welcome back to the start of the working calendar year 🥳. Based on the many Out of Office emails I’ve received, many of you will have started work this past week or will be starting this coming week. Firstly I wish you this year to be much less chaotic, more successful and full of good health!

The rollover into a new year is interesting. A new year is an arbitrary new number, but many of us, like me, feel it is a great time to stop, reflect and plan for the upcoming year. In some way, we all need some way to mark the passage of time. This is why timeboxing is so helpful. Although I’m a big fan of flow-based methods like Kanban for teams, it doesn’t mean you need to completely give up other timeboxing approaches like weekly or fortnightly retrospectives, or quarterly goal/OKR setting. Note: In Kanban, you should still have these repeated timeboxes but not necessarily coupled to one other.

Timeboxing helps us because as I point out in my time management course, activities often expand to fill whatever time we have. We might have done enough (nothing is ever done!) and we can move on, but without an end date, we might continue iterating, refining with diminishing value.

Ask yourself what time boxes you have in place for you and your team and if you might benefit from more frequent or smaller time boxes.

If you find Level Up useful, please forward to someone you think would benefit. Stay safe and healthy 🙏

Want to level up your technical leadership skills? Sign up for the online workshop, “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” or a take a self-driven training course at the http://techlead.academy.