Hey friends,

Hope you had a good weekend.

Here’s this week’s 1-1-1.

1 Doodle

At work, it is very common to get a ping on Teams, Slack, or whatever communication tool you use with a coworker asking, "Can we have a quick call?" or "QQ" (quick question). What looks like a few-minute sync often turns out to be a Trojan Horse, turning into a long call that derails your schedule. This week’s doodle is a reminder to watch out for these stealth time leaks that steal hours away from your own projects.

1 Do

Schedule a few dedicated time blocks on your calendar and check Teams, Slack, etc., only during those windows.

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1 Direction

If you notice a repeating pattern where you are constantly stuck on long calls that started out as "quick help," you need to fix it. This may require some deliberate planning.

• For example, if it involves a new hire and you are not their assigned onboarding buddy, you can set aside a specific daily or weekly window to answer all of their questions at once.

• If the training genuinely demands a lot of your time, discuss this with your manager and shift into full trainer mode for a day (or a few days) as needed.

• In other situations, if you realize a call is running past 15 minutes and requires more time than anticipated, speak up and ask to schedule dedicated time for it later.

I know this is difficult to put into practice. But if "quick questions" constantly turn into long discussions, you will likely end up working after hours and on weekends just to catch up on your own work.

That’s all for this week.

Warmly,

- Ehsan /a-🌞/

P.S. If this newsletter made you think of someone, feel free to forward it to them. They can read all past newsletters here and subscribe if they like.

P.P.S. I recently made a video on I left Intel (not a layoff, I left). You can watch it here.

P.P.P.S. Feel free to reply and say hi. I always enjoy hearing from readers.

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