erik.wiffin

The demands on a manager’s time are endless and sometimes it feels like you’re being pulled in every direction at once. These demands can make it hard to focus, they make it hard to move from reacting to problems to anticipating them. In this article, I’d like to talk about how I’ve limited demands on my time, counterintuitively doing more with less. The story The very first thing I learned as a new manager was that if I didn’t put a block on my calendar at lunchtime, there was no guarantee that I would eat lunch that day.

As a Director of Engineering, I have monthly 1:1s with all of my direct reports. A 1:1 (one-on-one) is a recurring meeting with no set agenda between a manager and one of their reports. The internet is full of valuable insight into how to run them from my perspective, (ex. The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster) but somewhat more limited in advice on how to make the most of them if you’re on the other side of the table.