An engineering manager’s 3-step guide to staying focused
By: Getyourguide Tech Blog
Tags: Management And Leadership, Productivity, Engineering, Leadership Skills, Engineering Management

An engineering manager’s 3-step guide to staying focused

Yonatan Aharon, the engineering manager, shares his 3-step plan to limiting distractions and helping you and your team win back focus time. GetYourGuide Tech Blog Follow Jun 8 · 7 min read

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Our modern workplace is full of distractions. Regardless of whether we work in the office or from home, it can take up to half an hour to regain focus after an interruption.

Loud conversations in open spaces, emails, workplace messages, meetings, and social media are all present in our day-to-day work. While tools and technologies should improve our productivity, we can often find ourselves in a situation where our workday is full of notifications and noise, while work is left unattended.

To help you focus, do deep work, and GSD (Get Stuff Done), Yonatan Aharon, the engineering manager on our Data Platform team, shares a guide to limiting distractions and helping you and your team win back focus time.

Here are Yonatan’s 3 steps: to staying focused:

Help yourself Help your team Help the rest of the organization

1. Help yourself

Claim your time.

Block your calendar with focus time. Make it a part of your daily schedule.

with focus time. Make it a part of your daily schedule. Wear headphones . Plugging in doesn’t mean you’re unapproachable. It can be a symbol of concentration and should be respected.

. Plugging in doesn’t mean you’re unapproachable. It can be a symbol of concentration and should be respected. Agree on a codeword with your team or department to indicate when people around you are too loud. The code word can be something like, “I can’t hear the customer”. Try it, it’s fun.

Put your phone face down or store it out of sight. The average person checks their phone around 110 times a day, so it’s a significant source of distraction.

Mitigate notifications

Emails and chat are the most popular channels for business communication and are heavily integrated into our daily work. There are simple ways to enhance the usage of them without constantly getting distracted.

Workplace messaging

Turn off notifications during focus time. Use DND/snooze settings for Slack.

during focus time. Use DND/snooze settings for Slack. Review your public channels and mute ones you want to stay a part of. Leave groups after a question has been answered, and let Slackbot remind you when to leave inactive channels.

and mute ones you want to stay a part of. Leave groups after a question has been answered, and let Slackbot remind you when to leave inactive channels. Manage your notification preferences to limit the notifications you receive

notification preferences to limit the notifications you receive Consider a limited sidebar (or a similar feature if you’re not a Slack user)

sidebar (or a similar feature if you’re not a Slack user) Be aware of and manage your time spent in discussions in group channels if you tend to jump on every thread.

in group channels if you tend to jump on every thread. Use reminders if you see something but don’t have time to respond now.

You may also be interested in: Here’s how our working parents stay focused while social distancing

Email management

Turn off notifications and treat email as an asynchronous communication channel where people expect a response within a few hours.

and treat email as an asynchronous communication channel where people expect a response within a few hours. Block dedicated times to review your inbox . I suggest checking it at the beginning and the end of the working day and pre/post the lunch break.

. I suggest checking it at the beginning and the end of the working day and pre/post the lunch break. Re-organize your inbox , and consider concepts such as Inbox Zero. For Gmail users, I recommend the following features:

, and consider concepts such as Inbox Zero. For Gmail users, I recommend the following features: Create filters to separate email categories, have items skip the inbox, or mark items as read/unread.

Use stars to highlight items that may be important but not urgent, to read later or respond at another time.

Customize your inbox to have unread at the top, an icon for “to-reply” after, a “to-do” after that, “waiting for response” after, and so on for non-urgent emails you don’t want to forget but don’t need immediate action.

2. Help your team

Building a support culture

We often support other teams within the company and are happy to lend our expertise. Here are some suggestions on how to minimize distraction while still being great collaborators.

Establish an operator

Your team should consider setting up an operator role.

Who : a rotating on-call or support team member, a product manager, or a team lead

: a rotating on-call or support team member, a product manager, or a team lead What : this person will take ownership of stakeholder communication, escalate burning issues, and own the team’s Slack channels on his/her weekly rotation day

: this person will take ownership of stakeholder communication, escalate burning issues, and own the team’s Slack channels on his/her weekly rotation day Bonus benefits: this is a great learning opportunity as the operator is exposed to challenges and domains usually owned by other team members.

You can use your days as an operator to work on tasks that don’t require much focus and are easily solved.

If you get requests when you are not the operator, ask the requestor to use the formal channels where the operator will provide support. Accountability is key here.

Office hours

Some teams may benefit from office hours. During this time, external stakeholders can pose questions via messenger or in person. The time outside of office hours should be used to focus on OKRs or roadmap related projects.

You may also be interested in: Work from home tips during COVID-19

Documentation

Documentation is an opportunity to optimize and simplify processes, removing potential bottlenecks and reducing the level of human support required. If someone asks you a common question and you cannot respond with a link to a knowledge base, create a document, and respond with that link.

The next time a similar question appears, you can simply reply with the same link or allow the team members who need such support to find the answer independently.

A manager’s day is traditionally cut into one-hour intervals. Hours can be blocked off for a single task. To meet someone, you need to find an open slot in your schedule. For a maker, on the other hand, meetings are not as easy.

While workplace messaging can be a potential source for distraction, it’s also a gold mine for identifying patterns for optimizations. Try to identify these patterns and resolve them by creating FAQ pages for commonly asked questions.

Team Schedules

Our team’s calendars are full of ceremonies such as standups, weekly performance updates, one-on-ones, and global business updates. By introducing some simple methods, you can significantly improve your team’s focus time.

Avoid black holes

Fragmented schedules create lots of distractions which take time to recover from. Try to bundle your meetings or schedule them next to other meetings, or other existing events such as lunch, beginning/end of the day. This will, of course, depend highly on the habits of your team members. Understand the differences between a manager and maker schedule and act in your teammates’ best interests when scheduling a meeting.

A manager’s day is traditionally cut into one-hour intervals. Hours can be blocked off for a single task. To meet someone, you need to find an open slot in your schedule. For a maker, on the other hand, meetings are not as easy. Makers can be engineers or writers who may think of times in half days, not hours. Y-combinator founder Paul Graham explains why you need to consider your maker’s schedule when planning meetings, “You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.”

Meeting-free afternoons

Promote a meeting-free daily schedule as heads downtime for those who need it (such as 2–5 PM). This is primarily for makers, so by default, managers are excluded. As a maker, block this time on your calendar when you need it, and others will do their best to respect it. Teams should not schedule recurring meetings (ceremonies, one-on-one, etc.) during this period.

Optional meetings

If you do not contribute and do not benefit from a meeting, don’t join it. If you do not attend a meeting, it implies that you are OK with others making the decision. If we observe a pattern where team ceremonies (e.g. all-hands, retros, etc.) have low attendance, we recommend revisiting the structure, content, or even the need for those meetings.

You may also be interested in: 10 ways we’ve adjusted to staying productive at home

3. Help the rest of the organization

Communication is key — if done correctly. Here are some suggestions on how to get the most out of Slack, email, and conversations with non-team members.

Workplace messaging

Minimize posting to channels with many people, and think twice — even thrice, before using @channel or @here (for Slack) in them. Such messages create a global distraction, and in most cases your questions can be addressed by reaching out to an individual.

Managing email

Include a deadline for responses or feedback to help your colleagues identify the urgency. For example: “[EOW] Your feedback is needed,” where EOW indicated the end of the week as the desired deadline for submitting feedback.

or feedback to help your colleagues identify the urgency. For example: “[EOW] Your feedback is needed,” where EOW indicated the end of the week as the desired deadline for submitting feedback. Target the relevant audience when sending an email to a list (such as Google group). If possible, choose the smallest audience.

when sending an email to a list (such as Google group). If possible, choose the smallest audience. Schedule your email shipment time for the end of the day or the beginning of the next day when sending a non-urgent email. This way, you will not create an interruption for the receivers.

Conversations with non-team members

Ask your manager or own team’s operator before reaching out to another team’s operator . We can often answer questions internally or leverage a team member who’s already dealt with a similar challenge.

. We can often answer questions internally or leverage a team member who’s already dealt with a similar challenge. Move in-person conversations that involve just parts of the team outside the team area to minimize distraction. Make your own judgment call: Will other team members benefit from listening to the conversation?

Final thoughts

Try to implement some of the suggestions above in the entire organization if possible. A no-meeting afternoon will have a bigger impact if an entire department can commit to it altogether and keep each other accountable.



Interested in joining our team? Check our career page for open roles.