Manage yourself before managing others 🙊 & My New E-book ✨

Hey friend,

Guess what? I've started writing an E-book on Principles of Effective Engineering Leadership. I am excited to see how it's coming along. 😬

This e-book will give you Principles and a Summary of expectations as you grow into an Engineering Manager.

If a friend asked me, what are some things they need to make sure to be successful as an Engineering Manager, this E-book would have all the secret sauce. 🍝

Do you think it would be useful? Click on one of the emojis below,

😍 Love the idea
😕 meh, it's alright
👎 you can do better

I can't wait to share more with you 😃. But more on that next week. Over to this week's newsletter.

“The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.” – Stephen Covey.

We often have many meetings and tasks we need to get done 😅. So it can be tricky to figure out prioritization and what needs your focus and attention the most.

Let me propose a framework you can use "Stephen Covey’s Quadrants, aka Eisenhower Matrix." Trust me, this framework has saved me so much time for the past few years, and I swear by this.

Eisenhower Matrix ✨

The four quadrants of the 2x2 grid are,

Important & Urgent
Important & Not Urgent
Not Important & Urgent
Not Important & Not Urgent

Urgent means whatever urgent is to you. Fake Urgency can pull you away from Real Importance.

Important & Urgent 🤝

They require immediate attention and are "Get it done Now!" tasks.
You’ll be less stressed if these tasks get done.

Important & Not Urgent ✅

Spend more time on these tasks and a quadrant where you should spend the most time.
If you don't focus on these, they will soon become important & urgent so focus on this quadrant majority of the time.

Not Important & Urgent 🏃🏽‍♀️

These tasks are in the "beware" category — they can drain time and energy without contributing to your long-term goals.
You should delegate these tasks

Not Important & Not Urgent ❌

These are tasks where you will waste a lot of time.
They don’t add much value and activities that drain your energy. It would be best if you spent less time here.

In simple terms:

Manage top-right
Spend more time in top-left
Waste less time in the bottom half

You can pick next week's Newsletter topic.

You read this newsletter weekly. Hence, now you have complete control to decide what topic I should cover in next week's newsletter.

Select one of the topics below

🧰 The Engineering Leader's Toolbox

Eisenhower Matrix
5 Lessons for new Senior Engineering Managers - I wrote this blog post for lead dev.
FREE personalities Matrix Assess your Leadership personality and see your archetype

That's all from me :)