Hey :) 

Last year we started working in six-week sprints. I mapped them across the year so they line up with school terms. Most terms are about 12–13 weeks with a break in the middle, so it made sense to split them in half.

A sprint for us is fairly intense. The first week is a bit scrappy as we get into the work. Then we find our rhythm. Then there’s a push to ship. Then a final tidy-up before we close it out.

What I like about it is the constraint. It’s easier for me to lock in when I know the intensity has an end point. Six weeks. That’s it. Head down.

But this year I’ve been thinking more about the two weeks in between.

The “cool down”.

Last year I mostly let the school holidays just… happen. The kids were off, we had some time away, some 1:1 time together, and that was good. But work-wise, the cool down often just turned into another two weeks of project work. Slightly less organised. Slightly less intense. But still intense.

That’s not what I want.

If the sprint is deliberate, I want the cool down to be deliberate too.

I don’t want the time with the kids to be a happy accident. I don’t want rest to be what’s left over. I don’t want the team to drift into new projects just because there’s space.

So I’ve been building a little checklist. Eight prompts to help me (and us) switch gears.

Not to stop working. But to change the mode.

Here’s what I’ve got so far.

1. Sprint review
What actually shipped? What got completed? What impact did it have?

2. Performance analysis
What do the numbers say? What worked? What didn’t?

3. Retrospective
What felt good? What was clunky? What would we change next time?

4. Tidy up and technical debt
Broken links. Tracking issues. Half-finished docs. Messy folders.

5. Process improvements
Update the templates. Fix the playbooks. Improve the checklists.

6. Experimentation and ideas
A bit of protected space to test something new.
A channel. A tool. A creative idea.

7. Learning and development
Skill building. Reading. Training. Sharing ideas.
Raising the floor a little.

8. Next sprint planning
Clarify goals. Shape the backlog. Decide what actually matters.
Start the next six weeks with intention. 

I’m still figuring this out.

What I’m trying to do, really, is respect energy cycles. There’s a time to push. There’s a time to tidy. There’s a time to think. There's a time to 'come up for air'. There’s a time to be with the kids and not half-working in the background.

The sprint has structure. I want the cool down to have structure too — just a different kind.

I’m curious how this evolves over the year.

If nothing else, I want to look back at this post in a year and see whether I learned to switch gears properly… or whether I just filled every gap with more work.

🗣️ 👀

Chris.