How I Stay Productive Every Day and Sound Confident in Standup 🚀
So, sometime last week, a Software Engineer (Grad) at my company randomly asked me to have a "coffee" chat with him. ☕
Weird.
Anyway, we sat down, and he told me he's been struggling with being productive. Which makes sense — when you're starting out, you feel like you have to Google everything just to move forward. We've all been there. Don't think you're better than him. 🤷♂️
Then he hit me with three questions:
- 📈 How can I be productive?
- 🎯 How do I report back with confidence in standup?
- 👀 How do I be more visible in meetings?
Now, these sound like easy questions, right? But they're not. There's no blanket approach to this — we're all different. The same way you'd roll your eyes if someone said "all ladies/gents are the same" — yeah, it's not true. 🙄
And if you just rolled your eyes at these questions… you might be mean. You might also need to be taken to a mental institution. Society doesn't need people like you. 😤
Anyway, here's how I answered him — based on my own experience.
1. How I Stay Productive 📝
I keep it simple — I've got a notebook. Each page has the date at the top, and I divide it into 4 sections:
- 🏠 Personal Tasks
- 💼 Work Tasks
- 📚 Daily Notes
- 🏆 Daily Wins
Personal Tasks 🏠
These are things I want to get done outside of work. Could be:
- Going to the gym 💪
- Running 5km 🏃♂️
- Working on my personal project (yes, I make PRs my fiancée "approves" — I don't think she even reviews them 😏)
Work Tasks 💼
Anything I need to get done for work that day. From the sprint board, meetings, or tasks I've picked up. For example:
- 10:00 AM Standup 🕙
- Create login endpoint for authentication 🔐
- Debug that weird invoice generation bug 🐛
Daily Notes 📚
Stuff I hear in conversations, meetings, or research that's worth remembering. Makes it look like you're always on the ball. ⚽
Daily Wins 🏆
Everything I actually accomplished that day. Seeing it written down feels good, keeps me accountable, and shows me I did get stuff done.
Example of My Notebook Page 📖
Date: 12 August 2025
-----------------------------------------------
Personal Tasks:
- 6:00 AM Gym – Upper Body Day 💪
- Run 5km after work 🏃♂️
- Read 10 pages of "Clean Code" 📖
Work Tasks:
- 10:00 AM Standup 🕙
- Finish login endpoint for authentication 🔐
- Debug invoice generation bug (#324) 🐛
- Reject someone's PR (Joking don't cacth feeling 👀)
Daily Notes:
- Discussed API rate limits with backend team 🚀
- Learned about JWT token expiration handling 🔑
- Found a potential DB query optimization in invoice module ⚡
Daily Wins:
- Completed login endpoint & unit tests ✅
- Fixed invoice bug caused by null customer_id ✅
- Suggested DB query optimization – approved by team ✅
That's it. This setup makes me more productive and keeps me motivated. 🎯
2. How I Report With Confidence in Standup 🎙️
When I joined as a grad, I didn't know how the corporate world worked. I wasn't a talker (still not, but I've improved). 🤐
In standups, my updates were one-liners:
"I wrote unit tests for the document generation function."
And… that was it. 😬
One day, my previous leader told me:
"You need to give us more. Standup is the only time in a busy team where people hear what you're working on. Even if you read from notes, it's fine — you'll grow into it." 📈
This also helped me have other understanding engineers while doing this when I was reading these notes. 🤝
That stuck with me. So I started using my Daily Wins to build my standup updates. I'd break it down into:
- ✅ What I worked on
- 🎯 What I achieved
- 🚧 Any blockers
- 💡 How I solved problems
Example update:
"Yesterday I completed the login endpoint including unit tests, and fixed a bug in invoice generation caused by a null customer_id. The fix involved updating the database query to handle missing values. No blockers today — moving on to integrating the endpoint with the frontend." 🚀
Doing this made me sound more confident — and more useful. 💪
3. How I Try to Be More Visible in Meetings 👥
This one's still a work in progress for me. 🚧
Here's what I've learned so far: I speak more in meetings when I know what's going on. If I'm clueless about the topic, I prepare beforehand. 📚
If tomorrow's meeting is about "data caching strategies" and I've never touched caching, I'll Google it the night before. That way I can at least:
- ❓ Ask a relevant question
- 💡 Make a small suggestion
- 👂 Or show I'm engaged
Sometimes all it takes is one question to start contributing more. 🗣️
Final Thoughts 💭
These three things have helped me:
✅ Track my day in 4 sections
✅ Use "Daily Wins" to fuel confident standup updates
✅ Prepare for meetings so I can contribute
If you try this and it doesn't work for you, that's fine — we're all different. But if you take away just one thing, it's this: write stuff down. Your brain will thank you. 🧠
Cheers. Love you. ✌️
Stay tuned - I'll be uploading YouTube content soon where I share more terrible advice that somehow works! 📺