SEM 09: An Engineering Manager Guide To Weekly Planning
How to avoid being burned out and reactive as an engineering manager
As a manager, you have a finite capacity. You have a fixed number of hours per week to work, so you want to ensure you spend your time on the most important things with the highest leverage.
Have you ever had that Friday feeling of exhaustion, yet when you look back, you can't pinpoint exactly what you accomplished? It's a common scenario for many managers caught in an endless cycle of meetings, emails, and urgent tasks. It’s easy to end the week feeling drained and unfulfilled.
The modern workplace is overwhelming. In highly reactive environments (most tech organisations fall into this category), it’s easy to spend your days jumping from distraction to distraction, getting nothing much done but responding to an endless flow of seemingly urgent requests.
As a manager, you might spend all your time in meetings, responding to emails, dealing with on-call emergencies, responding to the never-ending instant messaging firehose, and working on non-important but urgent tasks.
As a manager, you largely plan your own time, meaning when you come to work on Monday, there’s little structure to guide you. Without a solid plan, you’ll be pulled in many directions, overwhelmed, and likely burned out.
How can we fix this?
Most People Don’t Plan Their Weeks
If you operate without a plan for your week, you’ll find yourself in a reactive mode and finish each week feeling exhausted but having achieved very little. What you get done in a day will be dictated mainly by other people and whatever unexpected emergencies appear on your calendar.
Without a plan, you’ll lose focus and forget to work on what’s essential.
How To Plan Your Week
Weekly planning is the foundation for effective time management and the key to staying productive whilst avoiding burnout.
Planning your week requires being clear about what you need to do and ensuring you have the time to do it in your calendar.
Establish Your Baseline
Start by mapping out your non-negotiables - the meetings and commitments fixed in your schedule. This will give you a clear picture of the time you have at your disposal for other tasks. All managers have recurring commitments that need to happen. These include one-on-ones, weekly team meetings, and weekly operational and project reviews.
Once you understand your baseline for the week, you will better understand your available time to get things done. It’s probably less than you think.
Look Ahead
A good manager's motto is “no surprises”. One of the best ways to avoid surprises as a manager is to look ahead a week or two to ensure you don’t have looming deadlines you’ve forgotten. Looking ahead will save you and your team from failure.
Prioritise And Set Goals
The starting point for planning your week is understanding what is most important. You only have a fixed number of hours per week, so you must be deliberate when allocating time. You want to spend most of your time on high-leverage tasks and activities that positively impact your team. This includes hiring, making decisions to unblock a project, giving stakeholders what they need, setting and communicating goals, long-term planning, and reviewing technical plans.
List the things you need to do this week in priority order. Choose the most important and block out time for them.
I like to ask, “If I can only do one thing this week, what would it be?“. You’re looking for the tasks with the most leverage.
Block Out Time In Your Calendar
Your calendar is your best tool for planning your week. You must find time in your calendar once you’re clear on your most important tasks. Generally, you won't get things done if you don’t allocate time in your calendar. Something else will come up, or someone will schedule things in your calendar.
Allocate Buffer
Managers need to deal with unexpected emergencies. It’s an inevitable part of your job. Leave some unallocated space in your calendar each day for unforeseen emergencies, escalations, urgent meetings, and any other interruptions that will arise during your week. Having some buffer in your calendar lets you adjust and move things around if needed without completely derailing your weekly plan.
Managing Your Meetings
Managers spend a lot of time in meetings. It’s a part of the job. But given that you’ll spend a lot of time in meetings, it’s essential to be careful and deliberate about the meetings you choose to attend.
You should feel comfortable saying no to meetings that aren’t important. Managers get invited to all kinds of meetings, but just because you’re invited doesn’t mean you need to go. As a manager, you’re a role model for the rest of your team. If you have a pressing priority, decline the non-important meetings. “Sorry, I have a task that needs to be done by the end of the day. Could I review this offline?” is a great solution that prevents unnecessary meetings in many cases.
I suggest putting your meetings into one of three categories. If the meeting isn’t essential, it should probably be skipped.
Essential Meetings (Attend)
You must attend these meetings because they are vital to your job. This includes 1-1s with your manager, 1-1s with your team, meetings you are responsible for running, or meetings that form a primary responsibility of your job.
Important Meetings (Attend Unless There’s An Emergency)
You should attend these meetings most of the time, but you could miss them if needed. A weekly operational review might be an example; it is helpful but not essential.
Optional Meetings (Don’t Attend)
You are invited to these meetings but don’t need to attend. Your absence won’t negatively impact the meeting's outcome.
TL;DR
Investing one hour at the start of each week for planning can dramatically increase your productivity and sense of achievement as a manager. Weekly planning allows you to:
Clearly define your weekly priorities.
Anticipate and prepare for upcoming challenges.
Ensure dedicated time for high-leverage work.
Make strategic decisions about your participation in meetings.
Adopting a structured approach to weekly planning will enhance your productivity and set a positive example for your team. Effective time management is not about doing more - it's about doing more of what matters.
Thanks for reading.
Get in touch
Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear from you if you'd like to discuss engineering management. You can contact me directly, connect on LinkedIn, or visit my website.