Heroes & Housekeeping: How Teams Can Balance Deep and Shallow Work

• What should be done when your team's "shallow work" is just as important as their "deep work"?
• How do you empower your team to find a balance between small improvements and general maintenance tasks on the one end, and building new and exciting developments on the other?

On a personal level, the answer is batching your shallow tasks together and blocking a time to do them all at once. On a team level, a balance can be maintained between long-term projects and short-term demands with two new complementary tools.

• Each month one person on each product team becomes the "Hero." Their primary responsibilities are to communicate with their support team and take care of smaller improvements.
• The Hero should be able to focus entirely on their support duties. They're not assigned to any other product development work during that month.
• Being attentive to the support team and users means the Hero is unlikely to block off 4 hours or more of deep work, but it will enable everyone else on the team to do so.
• Being so close to user's requests and feedback gives the Hero a unique perspective into their problems and struggles.