Hey!

Welcome back to another week of musings. I hope you had a great weekend and managed to rest.

I keep watching the World Cup games, they're getting better and better! We also observed the 4th of July. And we're grateful for finding a home here!

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Things I enjoyed in the past week

• How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry An interview with Kent Beck on The Pragmatic Engineer podcast.
• Vercel's Andrew Qu on why agents are a new kind of softwareI've been thinking about agents recently, and of several things to build around them.
• "Mapping Your Architecture" with Simon Brown An interview with the creator of the C4 diagramming tool.

Have you ever been or seen other people who seem so busy they never respond to Slack or Teams, or only respond when you pull them into an incident call (basically forcing them to respond)?

I don't think I've reached those levels (I hope!), but anyhow, it's easy to fall into these traps of busyness, either due to thinking it will make you more important, or a better team player, or simply because it's easier to be busy than thinking of long-term projects or initiatives.

In practice, it's easier said than done, and with fewer people around due to layoffs, it's also more difficult to avoid having more and more work dropped on you.

Other times, I find myself going through the motions and getting more work on top of existing work, just "existing" at work.

I sometimes come across people who ask me for feedback, and when we engage in conversation, they sometimes fall into similar traps as I do, prioritizing "doing something" over choosing the highest-leverage activities.

Other times, they're filling their calendar with meetings without a clear purpose, not to move a project forward or anything similar.

And the last trap would be only working on "urgent/important" stuff, compared to more "non-urgent/important" things, if you follow the Eisenhower Matrix. It's easy to feel a duty to comply with things that have deadlines, but for companies and staff engineers, it is also important to prioritize long-term planning and projects.

Your turn!

Have you caught yourself being busy for the sake of it? How do you get out of the loop? Let me know your thoughts by replying to this email!

Happy coding!