Often a small amount of time from you can allow your direct to move onto the next stage of their project. So make it one of your top priorities to unblock people quickly.
So: Spend 2-5 minutes giving comments as soon as you get something to review.
- Sometimes this will immediately catch some high-level mistake: you can give them feedback on this mistake and they can immediately begin working on an improved version. (Whereas if you’d waited longer to give the feedback, you’d delay them.)
- Sometimes you can quickly ascertain that it’s good enough, and they can make progress with the project.
- Sometimes you will realize that you need to review it in more depth. Maybe you have time to do the full review now. If not, spend <5 minutes giving initial feedback, focused on:
- Any high-level comments that they could be working on between now and when you get a chance to properly review. This will save you both time by accelerating the qualityA
- Asking any clarifying questions that will inform your review: this could be missing information that affects your views, or it could be clarifying what sort of comments are most needed.
Additionally: Ask your directs to tell you what sort of comments are needed (high-level comments, critiquing key claims, tweaking wording). That will allow you to spend less time on comments, and it will also mean that your direct gets the feedback that they most need (and aren't annoyed by feedback that isn't appropriate to the stage of the project).