When rushing to finish things pause and reflect on what’s important.
Lately it feels like a breakthrough is just around the corner. It isn’t, but it feels that way. This is just me trying to complete this phase of development. It often feels like one step forward and two steps back as new steps are discovered to be required.
At times like this it is important to pause. I find it especially useful to write in pen in a notebook. Disconnect from digital and slow down with writing by hand. This makes me think more clearly.
Write it out
I write out what I think comes next, where to go after that, and other thoughts about the work. The goal is to dump out the current thoughts so I can see if there is some better order, or arrangement of the pieces than what I’d previously considered.
Ask your people to do this too. It’s not just for individuals.
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.