Leading Through Overcommitment: Finding Clarity, Focus, and Balance in Engineering Leadership

In the demanding worlds of engineering and leadership, overcommitment can feel like an inevitable part of the job. There's always more to build, more to manage, and more to improve than there are hours in the day. This often leads to a sense of being overwhelmed, a feeling that you're constantly juggling responsibilities without truly making an impact. But what if there was a way to navigate this challenging landscape, not just to survive, but to thrive?

This was the central theme of my recent talk at L8 Conf 2025. As CTO & Co-founder of Sunscrapers, with over a decade of experience in software engineering, entrepreneurship, and building engineering teams, I shared my insights on how to lead effectively by embracing clarity, focus, and a realistic approach to balance.

#The Journey from Engineer to Leader: A Shift in Operation

Many in leadership positions, myself included, started as individual contributors, driven by a passion for problem-solving and building. However, stepping into a leadership role means proactively taking on more responsibility. This isn't just about managing tasks – it's about having a broader impact, often involving more social activities and a shift from purely hands-on engineering.

Especially in smaller organizations, leaders often find themselves needing to do both: deliver hands-on work and lead or manage other engineers. This dual role, as illustrated by the intersection of Engineering, Leadership, and Management (see Figure 1), requires a new way of operating.

This transition is often fueled by intrinsic motivations like passion, ambition, and curiosity, all of which culminate in proactivity.

#The Double-Edged Sword of Proactivity

Proactivity is the drive "to make things happen rather than waiting for them to happen". It's about taking control, having more influence, and driving forces forward. Think about those team calls where someone asks, "Who can check how this works?" or "Who can pick up this ticket?" The proactive individual steps up, perhaps offering to summarize a discussion and refine it with the team. This is taking ownership.

However, unchecked proactivity can have side effects:

• Increased context switching
• More meetings
• Potentially becoming a manager without consciously choosing that path
• The risk of abdication or burnout

My personal experience taught me that while demonstrating leadership by taking on tasks directly was effective for a short while, it soon became clear that this wasn't a viable long-term strategy, as I started to underdeliver in certain aspects even in the medium term. This can lead to becoming a bottleneck or a gatekeeper slowing down your team, ultimately resulting in burnout.

So, is proactivity the enemy? Not necessarily. The key to be proactive while also learning when and how to say "No" – not just to others, but crucially, to yourself and your internal motivation.

#Clarity: The Power of "Important vs. Urgent"

To navigate the deluge of tasks, clarity is essential. A powerful tool for achieving this is the Eisenhower Matrix, which categorizes tasks based on their urgency and importance (see Figure 2).

A common pitfall is the "delusion of importance," where urgent tasks masquerade as important ones. This can lead to getting stuck in the "urgent & not important" quadrant, diminishing your overall impact.

How do you escape this "doom loop"?

• Define your roles: Understand your responsibilities within your team, at the company level, and consider who you want to be.
• Set goals for each role: Focus on long-term goals and keep the list short.
• Work on what contributes to these goals: Start small and prioritize tasks that align with your defined objectives.
• Learn to say "No": This is crucial for protecting your time and energy for what truly matters.
• Manage expectations.

I recommend reserving planning time daily, even before checking emails, and implementing weekly and monthly review cycles.

#Focus: From Maker to Manager (and Back?)

A significant challenge for engineering leaders is reconciling the "Maker's Schedule" with the "Manager's Schedule," a concept popularized by Paul Graham. Makers need long, uninterrupted blocks of time for deep work, while managers' days are often fragmented by meetings.

To maintain focus, I suggest strategies to minimize context switching:

• Schedule meetings back-to-back.
• Group tedious tasks together.
• Implement "theme days" (e.g., deep work days vs. meeting days).
• Avoid unnecessary status meetings or keep them very short.

The goal, echoing Stephen Covey, is not just to prioritize your schedule, but to "schedule your priorities". This involves booking time for important tasks first and planning everything else around them, adapting daily as needed.

For instance, when you need to put on your "maker hat" to deliver something important yourself, you should proactively block out an uninterrupted time slot in your calendar well in advance. Then, consciously schedule all your other commitments and meetings around that protected time. This approach ensures you can commit to your most crucial deliverables and maintain the deep focus required for such tasks.

#Balance: The Illusion of Perfection and the Strength of Adaptability

Many strive for an ideal work-life balance, but I argue that "ideal balance does not exist". Instead of chasing a static equilibrium, the focus should be on adaptability. As the saying goes, "If we want things to stay the same, everything must change".

Balance isn't about achieving a perfect state but about managing the dynamic interplay between:

• Weeks vs. days
• Energy vs. time
• Creative inspiration vs. perfect execution

Frustration often arises from "the gap between one's expectations and the reality". Understanding this can help in managing our approach to work and life.

#Putting It All Together: Practical Exercises for Sustainable Leadership

To help you put these ideas into practice, I suggest the following exercises:

1. Weekly Planning: Choose 1-3 key achievements for the week that directly contribute to your long-term goals. Start small with this habit.
2. Daily Adapting: Book time for your important tasks first. Plan other activities around these priorities and adapt your schedule daily.
3. Reflection: Dedicate "meta time" to reflect often. This means sharpening your tools and improving your way of working. It also involves adjusting your means and eventually goals as circumstances change.

#Embrace Your Own Leadership Journey

Leading through overcommitment isn't about finding a magic bullet – it's about developing a sustainable approach rooted in clarity, focus, and adaptability. The key takeaways from this write up are:

1. Distinguish between Important vs. Urgent.
2. Schedule priorities first and adapt everything else.
3. Make time for meta-reflection.

While these principles can guide you, the journey to effective leadership is unique for everyone. Often we need to have our own unique journey to explore who we want to be. It's often through this personal exploration that we discover the kind of leader we truly want to be. So, instead of just waiting for the next task to be handed to you, I encourage you to start small, take the lead in your own work, and intentionally define and shape your contributions.

#A Note on Influences

Many of the perspectives and strategies shared in this post are drawn from my own journey and experiences in engineering leadership. They have also been significantly shaped and supplemented by the timeless wisdom found in Stephen R. Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". It's my hope that these reflections, born from both personal trial and foundational teachings, offer a useful starting point or a fresh perspective for your own path to leading with clarity, focus, and balance.

On a more practical note, a tool that has been invaluable for me is Sunsama. While I use it as a daily planner, its real power lies in how it helps me implement and stay on top of the very practices described in this post. It supports my entire workflow, from weekly planning to daily adaptations, ensuring I consciously schedule my priorities first and maintain a sustainable rhythm. Finding the right tool to support your system can make all the difference in consistently turning these principles into action.