Tiny Thoughts: Weekly Snippets
Snippets are a weekly recap where you write down what you did last week and what you plan to do next week. It’s been a productivity secret of Google employees since the pre-IPO days and has spread throughout the tech industry.
Having a weekly reflection practice by writing snippets makes employees more autonomous, can remove meetings from your calendar, and help you be more productive.
When I was a data engineer at Zapier, everyone at the company wrote a Friday update where you shared your top priority for the past week and your top priority for the next week. Some folks would often add extra sections sharing something from their personal lives as well, since we were a fully remote company this was a great way to make up for the small talk you’d get in-office.
At Datadog now, there is a small community of folks who’ve started writing weekly snippets to recap their week and share internally. I’m a big fan of this practice and highly recommend it. This brief 15-30 minute reflection each week can help you clarify your priorities and provide an easy reference when you're up for performance reviews.