Time & Energy Management

When you became a manager, you traded a calendar you controlled for one other people fill. Meetings multiply, context-switching becomes the default, and the day disappears into thirty-minute slices. The hard truth: nobody is going to protect your time and energy for you. That’s now part of the job.

Here’s how I think about it.

Time is a budget, not a fire hose

You don’t have “more time” — you have a fixed budget you keep overspending. Treat your calendar like the budget it is.

• Audit where it actually goes. Once a quarter, look back at two real weeks. How much went to 1:1s, status meetings, firefighting, deep work? Most managers are shocked by how little is left for the work they think they do.
• Decline more than feels comfortable. Every “yes” to a meeting is a “no” to something else. If you can’t name what you’d contribute, you probably don’t need to be there. Ask for the notes instead — or, if it’s work rather than a meeting, ask whether it’s something you should be delegating rather than absorbing.
• Default to shorter. A 30-minute meeting expands to fill 30 minutes; a 20-minute one usually doesn’t. Trim your defaults.

Manage your energy, not just your hours

Two hours at your peak beats five hours when you’re fried. Time management without energy management is just a tidier way to burn out.

• Know your peak hours and guard them. I do my hardest thinking in the morning, so I refuse to give those hours away to status meetings. Push routine and reactive work to your low-energy window.
• Batch like work together. Cluster your 1:1s, cluster your reviews, cluster your shallow admin. Every switch between modes carries a tax — you pay it every time you toggle.
• Build in recovery, on purpose. Back-to-back-to-back is not a flex. Leave 5–10 minutes between meetings so you arrive present instead of frazzled, and protect at least one real break in the day.

Protect maker time vs. manager time

Paul Graham’s maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule essay is required reading, and it doesn’t stop applying just because you’re a manager now. You still have maker work — strategy, writing, planning, the occasional bit of code — and it needs uninterrupted blocks, not the fragmented half-hours a manager’s day is built from.

• Carve out at least one maker block a week and defend it like a meeting with your CEO. One genuinely protected morning beats five interrupted ones.
• Cluster meetings to leave runways. A day shredded into isolated 30-minute slots has zero room for deep work. Stack the meetings so the empty space is contiguous.
• Name the cost when you trade it away. Sometimes you have to give up a maker block for something urgent. Fine — just notice it’s a trade, and don’t let it become the silent default.

Attention is the scarcest resource

Time and energy are nothing without attention, and attention is what notifications shred all day long.

• Turn off most notifications. You do not need a badge for every Slack message and email. Check on your schedule, not the app’s.
• Single-task the important things. “Multitasking” in a meeting means doing two things badly. If a conversation matters, close the laptop.
• Have a system for capturing the noise so your brain isn’t holding it. (More on that in staying organized.) An overloaded working memory is its own kind of fatigue.

The goal isn’t a perfectly optimized calendar. It’s ending most weeks with enough left in the tank to lead well — without burning out — and to still be doing this a decade from now.