Make room for work nobody assigned
Open time is where I’ve found the problems a roadmap can’t see yet.
On this page
The people I’ve seen grow fastest usually build things nobody asked them to. Some of it happens on the side. Some of it happens at work, in time a company protects on purpose. Either way, it’s where they follow a hunch, try a new tool, and make every decision themselves.
Open Fridays
At an early-stage startup I worked at, Fridays were open, with no meetings and no assigned work. I used them on a problem that had been bothering me. People signed up, then didn’t come back. Our metrics showed where they dropped off, but not why.
So I spent my Fridays watching friends set up the app, asking what they expected to happen, and mapping where they got stuck. The answer was simple once I saw it. Our product lived inside a Safari integration, and to open it you had to remember an unusual step. People signed up and then couldn’t find it again.
The fix was a button that put the product in plain sight. It was one of a set of changes that improved retention, and it started in time nobody had assigned.
Why open time works
A roadmap is built from problems someone can already explain. Open time is for the ones nobody can explain yet. No one could have written a ticket for “people forget how to open the product” until someone watched it happen.
It changes people, too. When you build something on your own, you write, prioritize, test, launch, and explain it yourself. That’s the same judgment a small team needs from everyone on it.
How I use open time
- Start from a problem you’ve noticed. A new tool is a fine reason to start, and a problem tells you when you’re done.
- Keep it small enough to finish in a few weeks of Fridays.
- Bring it back. Show the team what you found, even as a short doc or a rough demo. What you learn only helps once the team has seen it.
Today
My side project now is Pare, an IDE for product teams that I’m building in my own time. Its agents report what they did, with a screenshot to prove it. It’s where I learn what agents can do, and where they still need a person, before I design for them at work.