Time is Precious | Issue #8

“I’ll get to it tomorrow” is a phrase I wish I said less. There’s an illusion of “tomorrow” or “later” that seems to never come. For things that are low-urgency and low-importance, perhaps this is totally fine. But for those low-urgency, high-importance projects? They’re the ones that usually get kicked down the road.

In our professional lives, there’s a tension between how productive we’d like to be and how much time we actually have. As engineers, we frequently spend time optimizing pipelines to shave off a few minutes. Throughout the day, however, we can squander hours of time on low-value interruptions. Many of which are completely avoidable.

In essence, it’s the difference between being busy and being effective. Being busy is a choice, but being effective is a discipline.

The cost of interruptions for any professional can be very expensive. This is especially true for engineers who need time for deep work. When you model your day with math, you can really see how interruption-driven work is essentially a day you can write off as completely non-productive. If a 5-minute interruption requires 20 minutes of recovery to get back into “the zone,” three pings an hour means you effectively never started working.

Over the past several years, I’ve tried various approaches to protecting my time so I can be as effective as possible. Take them with a grain of salt. Some might work, and others might be counterproductive for you. Give them a try and let me know!

If I’m interrupted, I’m less effective. So, whenever I need to work on something, I do my best to remove all interruptions. How?

The cost of context switching due to an interruption can be getting nothing done. I remove the interruptions to be more effective.

I block my calendar like I’m completely unavailable most of the time. To think through a tough problem, write a design document, or build a new pipeline, 30-minutes often isn’t going to cut it. Dedicated 2-4 hours of focus time gives me a chance to actually build.

Morning, noon, and night. I try to go through emails and other messages I need to get back to three times per day. If I don’t respond right away, but I need to, I create a task for myself. Why even schedule this? Well, if I follow my own advice above, I still need to take care of this “shallow” work. So, I schedule it to make sure it happens.

If someone needs my attention and I’ve got a bunch of other to-dos on my list for the day, my default response is to ask if it can wait or tell them I’ll be available later. A manager friend of mine joked recently that politics in the workplace is essentially just not using the word “no” and instead finding other ways to say the same thing. In my case, I’m not saying “no,” I’m just saying “not right now.”

My hope in saying “not right now” is that I empower the engineer to think a little more deeply about the problem in front of them. I’m not just trying to protect my time here; I’m ultimately trying to prevent myself from becoming a bottleneck for decision-making and learning. The results? Nine times out of ten, they figure it out.

Everything, and I mean everything, is a task on my list. The smallest communication, the reminder to myself, the article to read, the routine task, the thing to think about. They are all organized in my Obsidian notes. I try to space these out appropriately every week so that I don’t have a to-do list that spills over every day, but if it does, c’est la vie.

I also try to organize these to-dos as efficiently as possible. 3 tasks all related to email? Those are grouped together to get done at the same time. Deadline coming up on that task? It goes to the top of the list. Every morning, I organize this list to ensure I have an attack plan for the day.

I’ve tried to organize my time at home the way I do at work. Let me tell ya, it has never panned out for me. Even before having kids, life outside of work has never been as “organized” or clear-cut for me.

I still try, for instance, to create everything as a task, but it seems to take a different shape. When my Saturday morning is a mix of different activities I can do with the kids and maintenance around the house, sometimes we only get to two of the four things. And, well, that’s totally fine.

At work, I’m going for efficiency; at home, I’m going for presence.

I’ve read The Tail End by Tim Urban several times to remind myself of how little “time” I have left. Sure, I’m 31, and God-willing, I’ll have many decades left on this Earth. If I measure the “times” I’ll see my parents instead of the years we have left, I realize how little time I actually have with them. Or, when I’m frustrated with my kids because they’re bouncing off the walls, I try to recognize how many more Saturdays I have of them running around like crazy before they move out and start a new adventure in their own lives.

So what’s the lesson? What the heck am I trying to say, bringing all of these things together?

When you view time as a finite number of events rather than a vague span of years, the “Email Blocks” and “Focus Blocks” at work suddenly have a much higher purpose: they buy you the presence required for these “times.”

We don't optimize our work time just to do more work; we optimize it so we can leave work at the door.

Peace be with you,

psst… hey, could you forward this to someone who might find it valuable? I’d greatly appreciate it!