Multiple factors contribute to you appearing lazy even when you are putting in the work. But what they all have in common is that it involves transparent communication with other humans i.e a teammate, manager or stakeholder.
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
4 tips to not come across as lazy at work:
- End of day sync ups with atleast one teammate, ideally a 5–10min sync-up before you log off for the day, where progress and roadblocks for the day are discussed.
- Daily standups — This is where you get buy in from major stakeholders (or teammates). Your sync up from the day before should have give you perspective on your tasks. I’ve gone into a morning standups on multiple occasions and forgotten to mention areas I’d made progress on. I’d even suggest spending a couple of minutes before the daily standup preparing your plan for the day and updating your tasks from the previous day.
A sample update from the morning standup should:
- Convey progress
- Present roadblocks
- Convey action you took towards a resolution
- Convey updated completion time
- Exude proactiveness.
- Don’t use “I was supposed to…”
- Use “we” more often than “I” when you are referring to decisions that were made as a team.
- Don’t say something was unclear. It’s your responsibility to follow up with whoever to get the clarity you need to move forward.
Sample update during a standup:
“I had planned to finish up wireframing for project X yesterday, but it took longer than we anticipated to review the PRD (status update). I have added comments in the areas that need to be fleshed out along with my thoughts and pinged Person Y on it (roadblocks and how they were tackled). I have sketched low-fidelity wireframes for flows where there is no ambiguity (shows proactiveness on the planned task even when there were roadblocks). Once the PM resolves the pending issues, I’ll review the changes, clear any doubts and finish up the wireframes. I’m told the issues will be resolved by noon, so I should be able to wrap up the wireframes by EOD today. (give confidence that you are on track with the timeline)
- Update progress tracker eg. JIRA cards — It’s a small action, but can do a lot to convey confidence that you are on top of things and came prepared. There are times when a task would not get completed because an unplanned (and unavoidable) task came up. It’s very likely that you might forget to cover it during the standup since it is not recorded in your progress tracker app. Updating your progress tracker before the daily standup or at the end of a working day brings awareness on the tasks that ate up your time. So you are not left wondering in meetings why you got so little done yesterday.
- Clear any dependencies on Monday itself — Any conversations you need to have or documents you need access to, to get started on your tasks should be sorted out on Monday itself. Each time you interact with someone on a handover or even pinging them for a document reinforces confidence in you.
Takeaway:
Your team is your biggest ally. Even if you forget something, if you have the buy in of your teammates (and stakeholders), you’ll not be seen as lazing off.
