How to get things done for Engineers - Maker vs. Manager Schedule.

11 minutes ago

3 min read

You've had a busy day. Meetings, messages, a review, a quick question, another quick question.

You answered people. You made decisions. You kept things moving.

Then you look at the design you meant to finish. It's still open on your screen, somewhere underneath the meeting notes.

How can you work all day and still struggle to get the engineering work done?

Part of the answer may be the way the work is arranged.

Two kinds of work need different kinds of time

Paul Graham describes the distinction in Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule: some work benefits from long uninterrupted periods, while other work is organised around shorter appointments and decisions.

That distinction is useful for engineers because our roles often contain both.

You might spend one part of the day building a model or tracing a difficult fault, then spend another coordinating an interface with three different teams.

The problem starts when you expect the same arrangement of time to suit both tasks equally well.

Put an output beside the calendar block

“Work on design” is vague enough to absorb whatever time is available.

“Complete the first pass of the interface diagram and identify unresolved inputs” gives the session a job.

Before booking focused time, decide what you want to produce and gather what you'll need. That may include the current drawings, the requirement, access to a test environment and the answer to one blocking question.

You can lose a whole reserved session discovering that the work wasn't ready to begin.

Group coordination where you can

Look for meetings, reviews and routine questions that can reasonably sit together.

You might agree on a morning coordination window and a longer afternoon design session. Or reserve a particular part of the week for reviews.

This needs a conversation with the people you work with. Blocking out your calendar and hoping everyone guesses the plan isn't enough.

Explain which deliverable the focused time supports, when you'll be available and how urgent issues should reach you. If your role includes operational support, the arrangement must account for that responsibility.

Keep a small task list for the gaps

Some jobs fit well between appointments: confirming a reference, updating a drawing register, replying to a straightforward request or preparing review questions.

Keep those tasks separate from work that needs you to rebuild a complex mental picture.

That way a short gap has a useful purpose without becoming an excuse to start a large task you must abandon almost immediately.

You can also use the end of a short gap to prepare the next focused session. Open the relevant files and write the question you're trying to answer.

Leave yourself a way back in

You won't prevent every interruption. The next best thing is making the restart easier.

Before switching away, leave a short note: what you were checking, what you found and the next action.

For example: “Input mapping agrees with revision C. Still need to check the fallback condition. Next: compare sequence step 7 with the test record.”

That is much better than returning to an open file and trying to remember why you were looking at it.

A notebook or a shared task record can work. The important part is that the note is somewhere you'll actually see when you return.

Treat the schedule as an agreement you can improve

Try the arrangement for a week, then review the result.

Did the intended output get finished? Were colleagues blocked waiting for you? Did support work consistently consume the same period you had reserved?

Use those observations to adjust the plan.

You may need a different time of day, a shorter commitment or a separate person covering a support window. There isn't a universal calendar that makes every engineering role productive.

The aim is a workable balance between progress on your own tasks and the coordination the wider project needs.

Managers can help by making priorities clear

If you assign engineering work, explain what takes priority when two demands collide.

A request to protect focused work won't mean much if every message is treated as urgent. Equally, an engineer can't disappear into a design while other people wait on a critical decision.

Make the trade-off visible. Ask which outputs require concentration and which decisions need timely availability.

The conversation becomes much easier when you discuss the work, rather than debating who looks busy.

Start by protecting one useful session

Look at tomorrow. Choose one task that needs sustained attention, define its output and agree a realistic period to work on it.

Then prepare the inputs and leave a restart note when you finish.

Getting things done as an engineer involves design, decisions and other people. Give each part some appropriate space.

If you'd like to make those work notes more useful, read how taking notes can spark engineering inspiration.