Yellow-Red

A common team practice in tech is a daily standup. It’s a short checkin where everyone on the team says what they did the day before, what they are doing day-of, and any barriers they are running into to get their work done. This process keeps the team up to date on progress and helps everyone understand the blockers their teammates might be struggling with.

The team I’m working with currently added another checkin metric, a rating from green to red about how we are each feeling that day. This is especially useful on remote teams because it can be hard to read emotion or mood over tools like slack.

After we started this process I found the habit to also be helpful personally; It let’s me check in on how I’m doing. Over the past couple of days I’ve been reporting yellow-red. It’s a busy time with finals and projects all coming due all at one time. What I’m realizing is that yellow-red isn’t a bad thing, it’s a indicator that I’m pushing myself to work harder. It’s forcing me to find better solutions to challenging problems. Most importantly it’s giving me visibility into the things that matter, allowing me to figure out what to prioritize.