Introspectives: Having 1:1s with yourself
As an Engineering Manager I have completely drunk the Kool Aid regarding the importance of 1:1s.
However, I haven't always had managers that valued them or did them especially well. I was missing that space in my week to reflect on my work, take stock of my progress towards goals, have a sense of what gaps in business context might be widening, and generally let off steam about concerns that were on my mind.
Ideally, you get to cover this in your 1:1s, but when I found this lacking I started doing 1:1s for myself, which live in a folder in Obsidian called 'Introspectives.'
I do these most Friday afternoons - even nowadays, even though my current manager does regular 1:1s - as it's a habit I've gotten into and come to value.
They started as a breakdown of what I did during the week and then a bit of a journal of anything on my mind. Over the years, though, they've become a little more intentional. These days I start from a template that has a reminder of the three goals I am working towards (more on those in a future blog post), and then I try to capture what I specifically did that week to progress on each of those goals.
I used to have a 'wins' section in which I captured things that might end up in a brag document. The new iteration is more geared towards the way we do performance reviews at work now so I can demonstrate very specific responses to direct feedback I've received.
I do still have the more journal-esque dump of concerns and things on my mind, but that section is pretty small most of the time.