Prepare notes for Standups

Daily standups are a standard part of the software engineering life. Over the last four years I have had a standup of some kind nearly every workday.

Standup is a ritual, you circle up with your coworkers and take turns trying to remember what exactly you did to justify your salary yesterday. Every third update devolves into a 5+ minute derailment of the meeting that would really prefer not to follow. Then when it is finally your turn you spill out your update as quickly as possible. Only to slowly realize 3 minutes later that you forgot to mention half of the things you did the previous day. 

The solution to standup is pretty simple.  Just take notes.

I keep a checklist of tasks in the Mac notes app. I check off the item when its done. Then in standup all I do is read through my list. 

Just keeping a little list of tasks makes it easy to remember what you did for standup. It is easy and will save you the embarrassment of not having anything to say to justify your salary during the meeting.