Hey 👋,

I'm writing this on the 7th of December. Tomorrow I'm going on holiday, and I'd like to avoid touching the computer until I return.

Therefore, I scheduled this article two weeks before publishing it.

I hope you also take some real time off, and I hope to come back with more energy than ever. I already have some ideas to do new things for 2023.

This issue is related to the season we're in, at least in most Western parts of the world.

Enjoy Christmas if you celebrate it!

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Christmas Elves

Thanks to the elves, Santa Claus is always ready for Christmas. Imagine that you had a few elves working for you. What would you ask them to do? (professionally speaking, not at home 😂)

My Christmas Elves

If I had a team of Christmas Elves, I would ask them to do the following tasks:

• Prepare the meeting agenda one day in advance, and share it with the participants.
• Take notes during the meeting, summarize them and share them with the participants after the meeting.
• Review my code before requesting a code review.
• Prepare the pull request with screenshots, a description of the task, and a list of the most significant changes. In general, make the reviewer fall in love with my pull request.
• To try to solve the problem before asking for help.
• Communicate clearly to the team members what I’m doing now and what I’ll be doing next.
• Explain the context and the problem clearly, and propose a solution when asking for help.
• Take a look at the upcoming tasks and find possible dependencies or blockers from other teams or projects.
• Carry all the responsibility for my tasks. I wish the elves would take Extreme Ownership of the tasks I am assigned.
• Execute the tasks based on the team's priorities, and let me work on the ones I enjoy the most.
• Manage the stakeholders' expectations and keep them up to date with my progress.

Well, it seems that my elves would be very busy 😂

Unfortunately, I don’t have elves working for me. Yet, the work I would request is worth doing, and I might not be doing it because I am too lazy or don’t enjoy it.

Being a Good Team Member

Many times, I should be doing this or that for my team, but I don’t. I put it out because I don’t feel like it or prefer working on something else. But deep down, I know I’m wrong. I wish I could delegate those tasks to someone else. That’s how I got the idea of the Christmas Elf.

I’d love to have a Christmas Elf to help me be a better team member.

But instead of that, I will try to perform some of those tasks myself.

I’ll be my own Christmas Elf to become a better team member.

How about you? Which tasks would you like your elves to do?

If you like this post, consider sharing it with your friends on twitter or forwarding this email to them 🙈

Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions or see an error. I highly appreciate it.

And thanks to Jocy, Michal and Miquel for reviewing this article 🙏