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The most productive engineer I worked with at Meta joined the company as a staff engineer. This is already a relatively senior position, but he then proceeded to earn two promotions within three years, becoming one of the most senior engineers in the entire company.

Interestingly, what made him so productive was also frequently a source of annoyance for many of his colleagues. Productivity comes from prioritization, and that meant he often said no to ideas and opportunities that he didn’t think were important.

He frequently rejected projects that didn’t align with his priorities. He was laser-focused every day on the top project that the organization needed to deliver. He would skip status meetings, tech debt initiatives, and team bonding events. When he was in focus mode, he was difficult to get in touch with.

Compared to his relentless focus, I realized that most of what I spent my time on didn’t actually matter. I thought that having a to-do list of 10 items meant I was being productive. He ended up accomplishing a lot more than me with a list of two items, even if that meant he may have occasionally been a painful collaborator.

This is what the vast majority of engineers misunderstand about productivity. The biggest productivity “hack” is to simply work on the right things.

Figure out what’s important and strip away everything else from your day so that you can make methodical progress on that. In many workplaces, this is surprisingly difficult, and you’ll find your calendar filled with team lunches, maintenance requests, and leadership reviews. Do an audit of your day and examine how you spend your time. As an engineer, if the majority of your day is spent in emails and coordinating across teams, you’re clearly not being as productive as you could be.

My colleague got promoted so quickly because of his prodigious output. That output comes from whittling down the number of priorities rather than expanding them. It’s far better to deliver fully on the key priority, rather than getting pulled in every direction and subsequently failing to deliver anything of value.

—Rahul

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Narrowing focus can increase productivity

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