Being generous with my time
Summary
I prefer fewer meetings and more time to tinker and stay close to my craft. However, in recent months, I’m being more generous with my time so I can be a supportive colleague. With all the uncertainty that surrounds knowledge work and my team’s focus areas, it feels like the least I can do.
If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you’ll know a few things about me. I avoid meetings like that’s my job, and I’ve always preferred to be a moonlighting manager.
A moonlighting manager is someone who manages people only as a fraction of their job. These managers favour effective processes that drive autonomy within their teams, freeing up most of their time to focus on the craft.
So, for many years, I’ve been a professional recluse. Effective as an individual contributor, contented in my bubble, and zero aspirations to be a corporate overachiever.
And then, at the start of this year, things changed. I took on a global leadership role. My team’s small, but with a job title that reads, “Global head of culture and organisation design,” I’m accountable to all my colleagues at the company. I must acknowledge that it’s been hard to be a misanthrope in this role. To be honest, though, I don’t mind it.
Anchoring through uncertainty
My colleagues, my teammates and I are in the eye of a perfect storm. It seems like things are changing all the time. We’ve entered an era where we gaslight users for using the software incorrectly, and before you wrap your head around one way to use AI, you hear about the next. Prompt engineering gave way to context engineering, which then gave way to harness engineering, and now the labs are promoting loop engineering. Tech industry managers can’t stop doom-trolling. And while software engineering openings are at a three-year high, layoff news isn’t stopping.
On top of all this uncertainty, my teammates and I operate like an internal startup. While I’m grateful for the assured salary we take home, being an intrapreneur can be harder than being an entrepreneur. You get all the startup chaos, plus the inevitable red tape of a large company, and less autonomy.
The centre of a whirlwind is no place for a calm process. It is, however, the place to hold hands and gain reassurance. I'm generous with my time, and that's the least I can offer in this situation.
More visible, more accountable
Just because I have a fancy designation doesn’t mean that I’ve gained more authority. In a 10,000-person company, culture design is as much a political act as it is a creative exercise. By the way, “political” is not a pejorative term. If politics is the process of making decisions or allocating limited resources, then the moment you have a group of two or more people, you have politics. I’ve decided to embrace this reality.
My role lends me visibility across the company. I host a podcast, anchor a large community, and participate in several strategic projects at the company. All that visibility means that my colleagues often want to talk to me. They have frustrations to share, feedback to offer, or advice to seek. I feel responsible to talk to everyone who wants to talk to me. In my current role, it’s harder to escape into my mancave.
Balancing craft and accountability
I’m a tinkerer. I need time and space to create things, if only for my mental health. But also realise that in my job, I must make time for others. So, these days I find myself in more meetings and one-on-one discussions than I’d have accommodated in the past. I still decline meetings where I won’t add value, but I understand that the value of my time also lies in the reassurance and confidence I provide to others.
My multi-scale planning discipline has helped me in my new role. I still plan my weekly goals on a Monday, and I review how I did each Friday. Being based in India helps, since all my collaborators are west of me. That allows me to keep my mornings meeting-free. I still get up to four hours of deep work each day. That’s my time to make stuff, and geek out. The rest of my time — 16 to 20 hours each week — is flexible. If I have a free slot, I use it for small tasks; otherwise, they’re open for conversations. And I give those conversations my full attention.
In my global role, I have more meetings, but I still reserve my mornings for deep work
I’ve also reorganised my workspace to limit distractions during my meetings. As you’ll notice in the photograph below, I have a small screen on the left that also houses my primary video-conferencing camera. During meetings, I always face that screen, so I make eye contact with the people I’m meeting. It’s inconvenient and awkward for me to operate my keyboard or to face my main monitor or laptop while I’m on such calls. These are forcing functions that keep me engaged and focused on the conversation at hand.
My messy workspace – tap the markers to explore my setup
Of course, these tweaks to my workstyle come at a cost. I’m an introvert, so I’m often exhausted at the end of meeting-heavy weeks. Being in a global role means I often work late in the evenings. On such days, I take a mid-afternoon break to manage my energy, but the meetings come at the cost of a consistent workout schedule and time with my family or for myself. Being in front of screens for lots of meetings also leaves me less willing to edit photographs or to engage in other computer-centric activities over the weekend. These are costs I’m making peace with, since I’m getting to play a role I’d been auditioning for over the last five years. And hey, if being generous with my time also helps other people feel reassured and heard, I’ll take that bargain!