Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination
9 December, 2021

Sr Software Engineer at Uber
Why Senior Engineers Get Very Little Done
As senior engineers, we get interrupted a lot.
It’s no surprise that we have to collaborate with quite a few people on a daily basis, and chances are, we are interrupted every 15 minutes. What’s most important is to have dedicated, focused time in order to “get the job done.” Working long hours is not a solution because that would aggravate stress and anxiety. We all keep talking about productivity 一 the ability to get more work done in less time 一 but little do we know it’s easier said than done.
How to Be More Productive
There are specific techniques to be more productive. First and foremost, I started using the Pomodoro technique, where I would block 25 minutes of my time for a definite task. It meant shutting down on everything to focus on one single task at a time. After the 25 minutes of focused time, I would have 3 - 5 minutes of a short break to continue what I was working on.
Sometimes senior engineers fall into the trap of procrastination 一 it could be reading some documents or understanding the architecture of a model. During that time, if they get interrupted, they are more likely to procrastinate more. In such a case, the best way to avoid procrastination is by being more curious about the context.
Trying to ask oneself more questions about the topic and getting more invested in it does the trick. Be someone who’s interested in knowing, learning, and getting more things done. If you push yourself on widening your knowledge base, you’ll find yourself more into the task. One more technique is that you are more likely to complete it if you spend the first 30 seconds forcing yourself to read or perform a job.
Trying to get more curious and thinking more deeply about the problem helps in getting the task accomplished. Something as simple as reading through the documents for a couple of minutes can sometimes have your vested interest in the situation you’re trying to solve.
Identify What Blocks You From Being Productive
- No matter what happens, allocate some focused time for the core of your work every single day. Research suggests that you need to have at least 2 hours of focus time per day in order to be productive.
- Even though you’re working in the tech industry, try to keep away from the distraction part of it. Instead, use the Pomodoro technique and keep yourself focused on what you need to accomplish.
Discover Plato
Scale your coaching effort for your engineering and product teams
Develop yourself to become a stronger engineering / product leader
Related stories
26 June
Individual Contributors are familiar with a technical development framework that helps them with building products. Managers, especially new managers can leverage a parallel framework to help them build their teams while drawing analogies from an already familiar framework.

Viswa Mani Kiran Peddinti
Sr Engineering Manager at Instacart
23 June
Lucjan Suski, CEO & Co-founder of Surfer, relates how he started a company as a side project and shares his insights on bootstrapping tech startups.

Lucjan Suski
Co-founder, formerly CTO and CEO at Surfer
23 June
My accidental journey into product management

Michael Castro
Sr. Manager, Product Management at Capital One
22 June
Łukasz Biedrycki, VP of Engineering at BlockFi, talks about the importance of building on your strengths and finding your passions to maximize your impact. He dives into the tactics that managers can use to support their teammates in this pursuit.

Łukasz Biedrycki
VP of Engineering at BlockFi
15 June
Mugdha Myers, former Engineering Manager at Google, discusses the challenges of leading a team through the ambiguity and anxiety caused by a large-scale team restructuring.

Mugdha Myers
Engineering Manager at Google
You're a great engineer.
Become a great engineering leader.
Plato (platohq.com) is the world's biggest mentorship platform for engineering managers & product managers. We've curated a community of mentors who are the tech industry's best engineering & product leaders from companies like Facebook, Lyft, Slack, Airbnb, Gusto, and more.
