F in SELF Management - Managing your Focus and Energy
Focus on right priorities at the right time to become an effective Engineering Manager
You’re reading a series of self management techniques for Engineering Managers. In the first edition, I’ve written about S in SELF management, managing challenging and diverse situations as a leader. You can check it out below.
In this edition, we’ll look into how to manage your focus with too many things going around.
I’ve got a question for you: What are your current focus at work as an engineering manager, and can you confidently list your top three priorities? Take a moment to reflect—close your eyes for 20 seconds, think about it, and open your eyes.
Were you able to recall? If yes, Excellent! you’re among the elite list of Engineering Managers out there. Or does it feel like a haze with too many priorities, making it challenging to identify the top three? If the myriad of focus areas clouds your priorities, you're not alone. Being an Engineering Manager, everything will feel like a priority. You might think you need to focus on all of them to do your job well and lead your team to success. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing.
If you find yourself in this dilemma, it's crucial to address and manage your focus and energy on both personal and team priorities.
Focus on terms
As an engineering manager, you have to focus on different terms ranging from the present day until a quarter or even beyond that if you are planning a yearly roadmap or strategically aligning with other teams in your domain. How you split your focus among terms matters a lot.
Work you do everyday can be split into focus based on different terms.
Daily focus: Tasks and responsibilities that you carry out on a day to day basis.
Short term focus: Focusing on your work that is ranging from a week or two.
Mid term focus: Focusing on monthly goals and initiatives.
Long term focus: Focusing on quarterly goals and beyond.
Here are some examples of your work that get split into multiple terms:
What does the split between focus on terms could look like?
If you work for 8 hours in a day, according to above focus split on terms - you spend 3 hours (40%) on day to day work, 2 hours (25%) on short term focus, 1.5 hours (20%) on mid term focus and around an hour (15%) on long term focus.
Let’s take extreme cases to understand why splitting your focus based on terms is quite important:
Too much focus on day to day work: If you’re focusing 70-90% of your time on the daily tasks of your team almost every day of the week, you have forgotten long term goals and futuristic planning. This could also be a signal that you’re micro-managing as trying to be into every detail more than you’re intended to.
Too much focus on the long term: If you’re focusing most of your time on the long term goals and being in the ivory tower, you will find your team often getting blocked and left stranded. If you’re not assisting the team on a day to day tasks, they will end up not achieving short term goals and may even feel neglected by their manager.
Some days are exceptional as you might get swamped with too many day to day requests or you’re in a workshop the whole day planning for the next quarter initiatives where you may not have time to focus on daily activities. These are pretty normal for engineering managers but it shouldn’t be the case everyday.
If you find day-specific focus split is too granular, you can split the focus based on the week. Assuming you work for 40 hours in a week, you spend 16 hours (40%) on day to day work, 10 hours (25%) on short term focus, 8 hours (20%) on mid term focus and 6 hours (15%) on long term focus. How you split and when you have these focus on terms is up to you and as per your schedule.
Key takeaway here is, as an engineering manager, you need to manage your focus and balance from daily focus till long term focus. Too much daily focus means that you don’t have time to focus on mid to long term goals and might fall short of setting up direction and preparing strategically. And on the other hand, focusing too much on long term goals will leave your team suffering from day to day tasks and responsibilities. Result? - Falling short of achieving short term goals. Depending on your team dynamics, needs and context, you need to adjust your focus.
Now, it’s your turn. What’s your current split between focus terms on a given day look like? You don’t have to be very specific, you can use an average based on your experience. How do you go towards the ideal focus split that you wish to have?
Check-in and Check-out
How you start and end your day matters the most and can even change the perspective and outcome of your day. Personally I have found great benefit in deciding my focus area by having a check-in at the start of my workday and reviewing how it went with a check-out at day’s end.
What can be done at the check-in?
You are just rushing back to work after dropping your kid at the school and while on the way, you start to think about managerial duties. Where did you leave the previous day? What were you doing? Was it about the performance review that you want to finish writing for your direct reports before the time runs out? Uncertainty in your team’s future roadmap is concerning you? Big feature release that was expected to happen but got postponed for once, twice and forever? or what was it? - time has come to switch to work mode from life mode.
Following can be the agenda of the check-in:
Finish any leftover short tasks from the previous day: Let it be following up on a message that hasn’t been addressed by you yet, any people ops request waiting for your approval,
Sanity Check: Do a quick sanity check on project updates, technical system metrics and your calendar.
Deciding on top 3 priorities: Decide on top 3 priorities that you want to focus on the given day. What’s the term for those focus areas? Are they daily to short term initiatives or mid to long term that you need to start preparing ahead?
What can be done at the check-out?
After a long day at work with ups and down in your focus and energy, it’s time to wind up! Reflect on how the day went, how did you make progress on your priorities and what’s on your mind when you close your day.
Following can be the agenda of the check-out:
Has the day went as per the plan?: Review how your day went, what went well and what didn’t.
How was your progress on priorities?: Have you made progress on your top 3 priorities or is it another day that got filled up with last minute meetings or lived your whole day in slack? - Make a note of behaviors that you could change to improve your productivity and to reclaim focus.
What’s on your mind?: What’s that one thing on your mind that you need to clear right at the start of tomorrow? I used to have at least one or two such thoughts occupying my mind and that won’t allow me to get into my personal life. I learnt to pause until tomorrow so that it won’t bug me in my life mode.
Winding up helps you close your day and give you a sense of calmness to go into your life mode. After all, we have a life, isn’t it?
When can you check-in and check-out?
It depends on your schedule and how you organize your day. I usually have check-in at 09:00, allocating a 25-minute slot. I check-out my day with another 25-minute slot at around 17:15. I try to keep the schedule flexible as on some days I used to have meetings with senior management right at the start of the day or might get stuck at something like fixing a production issue with the team at the end of the day - I just haven’t figured out yet why things get intensified right at the time of bringing curtains down.
Decide on your ideal schedule and get this focus time for yourself to plan and reflect on your day.
Managing your energy
Another big factor that will decide your ability to focus and to be more productive is your energy - Energy that you have at a given time. Being an Engineering Manager, you tend to drain energy faster than you might think. Amount of context switching that you do, navigating challenging situations, being in infinite meetings and leading your team during turbulent times can significantly bring down your energy level.
If you're not being mindful of your energy levels, it will impact not only you but your team. Knowingly or unknowingly you transmit your energy to others in the team.
To be an energy efficient engineering manager:
Don’t be involved in each and every tiny detail of technical decisions. Delegate it to your team
Enable your team to be self managed wherever possible
Say NO to unimportant stuff and save your energy
Channel your energy in the right direction for the right purpose
Know your peak energy time and use it for top priorities
One can’t just simply be a “go-go-go” manager. Micro-management is the most energy inefficient style and not many see it from an energy management perspective. You’ll be drained, face burnout and most importantly, your team will not appreciate it at all.
I’ll write a separate post on energy management, as it deserves to be written in detail.
SELF Love Journal
Now that you know about the SELF framework for managing yourself as an engineering manager. How do you know you’re getting better at it? It’s not rocket science. You deserve time on a regular basis just for yourself to self care and take notes of how you’re doing against the SELF framework and what you could have done better. I call it a “SELF Love Journal”.
Book a slot on a regular basis (weekly / bi-weekly schedule whichever that suits you) in your calendar and below can be the agenda:
How did you handle or react to situations? Pick one happy and stressful situation and reflect on it.
Were you able to anticipate, assess and immerse yourself in the situation? What do you want to improve next time?
Were you able to regulate your own emotions and understand others’ emotions in various situations?
What is your comfort circle looking like? What are you currently learning? What do you want to learn next and how?
Were you able to focus on the most important priorities for you and your team? How did you split your focus based on terms: daily, short term, mid term and long term?
What’s your energy level this week? What could you have done better to be energy efficient?
Pick a few of the specific cases to discuss with your direct reports and also with your manager to get their feedback. As an outcome of the self love session, plan action items and improvements for yourself and invest in the process.
That’s it for now.
What’s your experience in managing your focusand energy and how challenging it is? Let me know in the comments.
Next up, I’ll publish the last edition of the SELF management series, which is managing your emotions. It’s coming along well but taking it’s own time it deserves.
Stay tuned!