I wish I started doing this on day 0 of my career as an engineer
Avoid constant interruptions and make progress on what matters
If you’re a software engineer, you’re probably familiar with this:
You pop open your laptop for a day’s work.
You think you’ll move forward on your project.
Before you know it, it’s the end of the day and you don’t even know what you did.
You show up for stand-up the next day thinking, “Wait, what did I even do?”
In this post, you’ll learn the 1 thing that will help you avoid this trap.
⭐️ The 1 thing to avoid this trap
When I tell you the 1 thing, you’ll likely fall into 1 of 2 buckets.
“Of course, I do that every day.” (yay if this is you)
“I’m out. I don’t need to do that.”
And trust me, I was in bucket 2 for the longest time.
Without further ado, here it is: Plan your day.
Now, if you are like how I was in bucket 2 thinking, “Bad advice. Your day changes all the time. Planning is pointless,” I get you. But hear me out.
🤔 Why you should plan
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
When you don’t plan, you give up control of your day.
You allow yourself to be pulled in directions throughout the day which leads to you feeling like you didn’t get anything done at the end of the day.
Conversely, when you do plan:
You think about what’s most important, not only what’s easiest
You give yourself control by having a plan you can make tradeoffs against—rather than being pulled in many directions.
You end the day having achieved what you set out to—without wondering what you did for that day.
📙 Personal story
Before I started doing this, I constantly focused on what others had in store for me. I didn't focus on what I wanted or knew I needed to accomplish.
On some days, I’d review pull requests all day without moving forward on what I needed to get done. Or it would be a combination of reviewing code, answering questions in Slack, and fielding requests that can wait.
When I started noting down 1 thing I wanted to accomplish that day, I stopped instantly dropping what I was doing to focus on the interruption.
I was on a mission to finish what I planned.
With that said, sometimes I still stop what I’m doing. It’s just that I’m making a tradeoff decision now.
Before: Something came up. Let me drop what I’m doing to resolve it.
After: Something came up. Is it worth me foregoing my plans to resolve it now?
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb2757bb1-6c6b-4aa0-88e6-7cdd41e20bed_1304x392.png)
✍️ How I plan
I’ve spoken about how I plan at length in the article, How to get 💩 done as a software engineer, but here’s the short version:
Each month, I pick about ~10 things I want to do that month
Each week, I pick things from what I planned for the month
Each day, I pick things from what I planned for the week
I use Todoist to track this. I set a daily task to plan and it takes me about 2 minutes.
You don’t need to follow my exact process.
A simple way to get started with planning is to take 30 seconds each day to write down 1 thing you want to get done that day and skip the weekly/monthly planning.
That process of 1 thing for the day is what I do at work. The more heavyweight process is more for managing personal learnings and content creation tasks.
📖 TL;DR
Plan your day. One way you can start small with this is by taking 30 seconds to write down 1 thing you want to get done that day.
The important part is planning. You don’t need to follow the plan 100%. The value comes from thinking about what is most important. It helps you avoid being pulled in directions throughout the day.
I experimented with a different post length and style this time.
Help me out by letting me know your thoughts in the poll below!
📣 Shout-outs of the week
Influential people don’t network, they build social capital on The Caring Techie Newsletter by
— Learn that influence is much more about “pre-work” than what you’d normally thinkBeing fair is not the best way to succeed on Tech Books by
— I recently discovered this Substack and would highly recommend it. Anton Zaides, the author of is co-authoring a substack that takes top books and shares learning and reflections on applications to software engineeringHow to start, grow, and monetize your engineering newsletter on
and Engineer’s Guide to LinkedIn on — these two combined will set you up for a successful social presence and help you grow through teaching.
Thank you for your continued support of the newsletter and the growth to 49k+ subscribers 🙏
- Jordan
Let’s get to 50k subscribers!!! If you enjoyed this issue, please share it with a friend!
You can also hit the like ❤️ button at the bottom of this email to help support me. It really helps!
Sometimes we don't plan because we don't like what we see.
We prefer to be pulled in any direction and feel busy, instead of taking scary steps towards our goals.
But if we do the upfront work of thinking about what we want, we will move ahead.
Your newsletter is a wake-up call for many to think about their goals and what they want to achieve.
Let's keep growing, Jordan!
I really do enjoyed your newsletter. Planning and execution are the key parameters to sustain career growth. Many of us planned but fail to take action and execute the plans.
I am super excited to read the newsletter in-between lines. I hope to see more of your newsletter.
Thank you!