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Notes on doing better work.

Short, practical reads on building, shipping, and working together without unnecessary process.

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Paperwork Team

The Real Cost of Context Switching

Developers spend 10+ hours per week in meetings and lose 23 minutes refocusing after each one. Here's the real cost of context switching.

Productivity Team Culture Meetings Developer Experience
Paperwork Team

The Small Team Tool Stack

The Slack + Notion + GitHub Issues stack your small team cobbled together is not a system. Here's what a focused tool stack actually looks like.

Process Tools Developer Experience Small Teams
Paperwork Team

Why every standup violates the maker's schedule

Paul Graham wrote about the maker's schedule in 2009. Fifteen years later, we're still scheduling standups at 9:30am and wondering why developers can't get into flow before lunch.

Standups Developer Experience Maker Schedule
Paperwork Team

Async standup tools compared: Geekbot vs Range vs DailyBot vs not doing them at all

We tested Geekbot, Range, and DailyBot for 3 months each. They're all fine. But the real question is whether async standups are worth doing at all.

Standups Async Developer Experience
Paperwork Team

What developers actually want instead of Jira (spoiler: not another Jira)

I asked 50 developers what they'd use if Jira disappeared tomorrow. Not one of them described another project management tool. Here's what they actually want.

Developer Experience Jira Anti-PM
Paperwork Team

Developers spend 10.9 hours/week in meetings. Here's the math on what you're losing.

The average developer spends 10.9 hours per week in meetings. We did the math on what that costs in shipped code, focus time, and morale.

Meetings Developer Experience Engineering Culture
Paperwork Team

The Slack + Notion + GitHub Issues stack is not a system

You duct-taped Slack, Notion, and GitHub Issues together and called it project management. It's not a system — it's three tools pretending to talk to each other.

Developer Experience Small Teams Team Coordination
Paperwork Team

You don't need a simpler Jira. You need to stop using project management software.

Every year a new tool promises to be "Jira but simpler." The problem isn't Jira's complexity — it's the assumption that your team needs project management software at all.

Developer Experience Jira Anti-PM
Paperwork Team

When the Tool Starts Running the Team

Tools should support decisions and delivery, not become the center of the work day.

Team Culture Tools Developer Experience Jira
Paperwork Team

When Work Feels Pointless

Teams can handle hard work. What hurts motivation is effort that does not feel meaningful.

Team Culture Leadership Developer Experience Scrum
Paperwork Team

The Cost of Adding One More Tool

Every new tool solves one problem and creates a few new ones if the team is not careful.

Productivity Tools Developer Experience Small Teams
Paperwork Team

The Morning Notification Problem

You start the day with noise before real work even begins. Here is why that happens and how to fix it.

Productivity Tools Meetings Developer Experience