Key to Unlocking Daily Success as an Engineer
Five practical tips to seize each day
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Have you ever wondered how some engineers handle multiple tasks and still find time for focused work? Or how a colleague gets through their day so efficiently?
It all boils down to time management – prioritizing and organizing your time.
Time management is an underrated superpower for engineers. We love diving into problems and often get caught up in new challenges. But managing our time is crucial.
After years of refining my approach, here are my best tips.
1) Write Daily & Weekly Plans
You need to plan your time on a daily and weekly basis. With so many competing priorities, it's hard to achieve them all.
How do I do it?
I jot down plans for the day in a notebook.
I spend 5 minutes daily and 10 minutes weekly.
I sort my priorities so that I always tackle the most complex problems first.
As you can see, I have two columns: one for today and one for following up / being blocked by someone else. The second is to keep track of what I need to follow up on.
I write these priorities in a paper notebook to prevent computer distractions. As a bonus, its tactility helps me connect with my work better.
What to do:
✅ Write down what I plan to do for the day
✅ Prioritize the list
✅ Schedule 10 mins break in between
✅ Add an end-of-day buffer (~30 mins) for emergencies
❌ Let the day be free-form
❌ Jump into the latest emergency at work
❌ Work overtime to accomplish your goals
2) Eat the Frog
Eating the frog means tackling your most challenging task at the start of the day. Given its difficulty, you are most likely to procrastinate on this task.
While doing small and easy things makes you feel productive, the largest tasks often reap the biggest rewards.
To progress in your career, you must focus on your most challenging task first thing in the morning.
What to do:
✅ Find the hardest task of the day and tackle that first.
❌ Tackle five easy tasks to clear things out as soon as possible.
3) Block your calendar
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
Cal Newport, Deep Work
Add focus blocks to your calendar. If you want to achieve your daily priorities, you need your focus blocks.
People will find time on your calendar to achieve their priorities. While collaboration is important, you must also ensure you get your priorities done first.
I like having Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as my focus days, while Tuesdays and Thursdays are meeting-empty days.
Remember to set expectations with your colleagues. Let them know that you will reply slower on these days. I do this through a personal status message I set on my internal work chat.
You can also set up an event that auto-declines new calendar invites during your time blocks. See "Learn how to say no," a collaboration I wrote with
last week for more tips.What to do:
✅ Set focus days or blocks of time
✅ Collapse meetings together on the same day as much as possible
✅ Inform others that you will be slow to respond on these days
❌ Leave your calendar open to other people slotting in requests
❌ Check for new chat messages while in focus mode.
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4) Reflect at the end of the day
Most people overestimate what they can get done in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year.
Spend 10 minutes at the end of each day to reflect on your accomplishments.
Go through your list that you originally set out, and cross out those that you accomplished. Use this to tune my priorities better.
What to do:
✅ Reflect on priorities at the end of each day
✅ Tune your expectations of how much you can get done
❌ Skip reflection completely
5) Rest
Get the rest you need.
Stop working at 5 p.m., spend the rest of your time with family, and take your mind off work.
I tend only to schedule my weekdays and leave the weekends open for more rest.
Last but not least, get at least eight hours of sleep.
What to do:
✅ Take time in the evenings to rest from work
✅ Get at least eight hours of sleep
❌ Continue working all day till late
TL;DR
Time management is essential. Use these five tips to master this skill:
Write daily & weekly plans. Any day that goes unplanned is a day lost.
Eat the Frog. Tackle your top priority first. Repeat this every day.
Block your calendar. You are set up to fail if you don't have time to tackle your priorities.
Reflect at the end of each day. Use this time to understand how your day went and adjust your expectations.
Rest. Make sure to have time for yourself to rest.
Weekly Reads
This week, I've enjoyed these reads. I hope you enjoy them too.
The secret of the best engineering manager I know by
. I love how this article talks about matchers and givers. Important framework for work relationships.. Controversial title, but this (paid) article shares more about how to work with managers well.Replace All Staff Engineers with Multiple New Grads by
in Techlead Mentor. Raviraj talks about a healthy balance in teams. Also a solid read.Thanks for reading. I hope this helps you in your journey to grow as a software engineer. These are shared from a decade-long journey working as a software engineer in startups and Big Tech.
Have thoughts or feedback? Comment or reach out to me here or on LinkedIn.