I have been struggling to get into focussed deep work and be more productive for my role. I have tried following methods still things are not working as expected. Any help or methods or tools that have helped you please share here • Have focussed time blocks for dedicated deep work. But since team management is also part of my role, with growing team the time blocks are becoming too small. • Tried with no meeting days but since whole org does not adhere too it, working with cross functional teams not able to achieve it. • Following are the tools i tried with to track todos and ensure not getting lost ◦ Pencil and notebook with regular strike off. Unable to be effective to jot down and gets lost to search for anything ◦ Apple Notes . Have worked to an extend. ◦ FocusTodo - Helped in achieving small time blocks • Any other effective ways or methods you follow can you share to make ur day more productive. Role is mix of people management plus hands on engineer. So typical day would involve more of PRs, architecture discussion, business discussion, task management , unblock other devs

What has worked for me in the past is this: • Start my work day earlier than everyone • Block my calendar as busy. for a 3 hour block in the morning. I did this everyday, so eventually the team knew that I am not available for meetings in the morning hours. • A nap for 30 mins in the afternoon. Once I do this in the 1st half of the day, I was more than ok to do meetings, discussions rest of the day. I was able to do 3 hour of deep work which was more than enough for me. During the morning hours, I would intentionally not open slack, emails.

For me, allowing myself a complete, disconnected break from work, no matter the urgency has helped me gain my deep work mode.

But since team management is also part of my role, with growing team the time blocks are becoming too small.

Why? Can you elaborate a bit more on what's happening here?

-ETOOMANYMEETINGS. Most are pointless. As someone who manages 30-40 people some things that work for me: • Switch status updates meetings to a shared google doc and use the meeting slot to only discuss blocking issues • Block your calendar when you need to set aside time • Learn to say NO - to meetings, to casual conversations • Set expectations - e.g. emails will be checked and answered only twice a day, By batching things you can create larger slots of time. • Turn off your phone notifications during your core hours - nothing is happening on whatsapp • Turn off all app notifications - period. You check chat, email as per your schedule.

As someone who manages 30-40 people

Are they direct reports or is this a "manager of managers" scenario ? if it is the former, i am unable to imagine how the responsibilities expected of a direct manager in my team/org, for 30-40 individuals, can be fit into a single person's schedule (<1 hour/individual/week seems too low for the managerial responsibilities expected in my team/org). Q. @helpful-gigabyte-47939 in your team/org , what all is expected from a manager who manages 30-40 ppl?

@chilly-rocket-77832 I have 5 domain leads, to handle details of each domain. But overall engineering (product architecture, execution and task assignment) falls to me. The way I make it work is by saying no to line management responsibilities. So I only get cc'ed on leaves, provide inputs into a person's performance but am not directly responsible for those tasks. A pure engineering manager handles those aspects.

Thanks for clarifying Amit. Makes sense now. What you describe sounds like an optimised setup 👍🏼 @elegant-appointment-49116 to add to Amit's above points...

Role is mix of people management plus hands-on engineer

This description of your responsibilities, sounds like the typical recipe for disaster. (usually for the people being "managed"). Risks: a. In a time-crunch, one will end-up doing less and less open-ended, forward-thinking, heads-up work required for successful people-management (or even product-management). b. Alternately, one's engineering effectiveness will drop if one cannot keep-up with the technical updates over time. c. One will keep-up with the technical updates, but the team's velocity will drop, as while trying to keep-up with all the updates, one becomes the bottleneck for reviews/approvals. TL;DR: Time-boxing is the way. If you find yourself occasionally "dropping balls", highlight this to distribute some of your current responsibilities.

When was the last time you took a break? Sometimes the fix is taking a back and just going on a break

You don't have to be in "complete" control of the situation at all times. Just focus on the top 2-3 issues at hand. Let the other ones slip (i.e. delegate or eliminate)

I am not as experienced as you so please excuse my noob suggestion - But what actually worked for me was taking a break. I took a 3 month long break and when I went back I could feel a remarkable difference in my focus. Burnout is so insidious because it creeps up slowly and we don't realize we've burnt out. Instead we start questioning our abilities which makes things worse.