1. Audit

Where is your time actually going? Start by tracking everything you do for a week. You can use a time-tracking app, a spreadsheet, or even a simple notebook. If you’re like me and you live and die by your calendar app, you can also just pull up the weekly view and do an assessment from there.

The goal is to uncover patterns: Are you spending too much time in meetings? How are you spending the time in between them? Are you losing chunks of the day to emails or context switching? Once you have a clear picture, categorize your activities into high-value (e.g., strategic planning, mentoring) and low-value (e.g., repetitive tasks, unnecessary status meetings). If you use Google Calendar, pick colors to represent different types of tasks and the page will show you in the left nav what proportion of time you spend on each activity.

From there, you can eliminate, delegate, or streamline the tasks that don’t align with your priorities. It’s a small investment of time that pays big dividends in clarity and focus.

• Eliminate: What meeting are you in right now, and what is your participation level? If you are reading this blog instead of paying attention to the meeting, you are fragmenting your attention and not contributing value to either activity. Decline meetings that don’t require your active participation.

• Delegate: What responsibilities are you doing currently that could be shared among your team? Evaluate your task list with a critical eye to determine which tasks absolutely must be done by you. Everything else is on the table for delegation. Try to match responsibilities with folks who are looking to grow in those areas.

• Streamline: Are you spending your time doing repetitive tasks that could be automated? As a software engineer, it was usually worth the time to build a script, write a macro, or find a tool that could speed up the repetitive tasks that don’t require as much deep thought to perform. Try chatGPT or a snippet/text expander to speed up your next task. At the very least, try batching tasks so that you are reducing switching costs.

2. Set Priorities That Stick

Setting priorities that stick is all about aligning your time with what truly matters. As a leader, it’s easy to get caught up in the daily whirlwind of urgent tasks and immediate demands, leaving little room for the bigger picture.

Start by clarifying your long-term goals—both personal and professional—and breaking them down into actionable steps. Tools like the Eisenhower Matrix can help you separate what’s urgent from what’s important, ensuring you focus on tasks that drive meaningful progress. Another approach is using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to align your priorities with your team’s goals. The key is consistency: revisit your priorities regularly to adjust as needed and avoid drift.

3. Master the Art of Saying No

Saying no with grace is one of the most powerful time management skills a leader can develop. It can be difficult to admit when you are operating at your capacity, but it is important to recognize that every “yes” to something new is a “no” to something else, often something more important.

When you need to say no, do it with empathy and clarity. Acknowledge the request and its importance, explain your constraints, and, if possible, offer an alternative solution or delegate the task to someone better suited. For example, you might say, “I’d love to help, but my focus this week is on [top priority]. I think [colleague’s name] might be able to assist.” Practicing these conversations can help you feel more confident and find the right words for tricky situations, turning a hard “no” into a productive dialogue.

4. Lead Your Time, Don’t Let It Lead You

Proactively planning your time is the secret to staying ahead of the chaos and making space for what truly matters. Just like preparing your meals for the week on Sunday, preparing your schedule in advance means that you are out of reactive mode and taking charge of your time. One effective strategy is time blocking—dedicating specific chunks of your calendar to particular tasks or priorities. Start by identifying your energy peaks and schedule your most demanding work, like strategic planning or problem-solving, during those times. Block out time for recurring responsibilities, deep work, and even breaks to recharge. At the start of each week, map out your top goals and allocate time for them on your calendar, leaving some buffer for the unexpected. Pair this with a quick daily review each morning to adjust as needed and stay focused.

Every Monday morning I ask myself three questions and write down the answers:

• Where do I want to win this week?

• What actions do I need to take to get this win?

• What positive soundtrack do I need to play in order to help me get this win? (If you like this, check out Soundtracks by Jon Acuff)

And every day I post in a public channel on slack:

• What is my main focus for the day?

• Why is it important?

• What outcome am I driving?

This intentional approach not only increases productivity but reduces the mental load of constant task-switching. A coach can help you refine this system, ensuring your plan aligns with your values and leadership goals while holding you accountable for sticking to it.

Time management isn’t about packing your day to the brim—it’s about creating the space to lead effectively, focus on what matters most, and avoid burnout. By auditing your time, setting clear priorities, learning to say no, and planning proactively, you can take control of your schedule instead of letting it control you.

Thanks for reading Keeping Steady. I’m Katie, an engineering manager turned coach, writing for the people doing the hardest version of the job.

If this one resonated, two easy next steps:

• Subscribe so the next note lands in your inbox.

• If you’re in the thick of it and want a steady partner in your corner, coaching is exactly what I do. Grab a free, no-pressure discovery call here: cal.com/katie-leonard-northvine/discovery-session

And if a manager you know needs to hear this, forward it their way. That’s how Keeping Steady finds its people.

Four months into a new job, I was already sweating.

I’d joined as an individual contributor on a 15-person engineering team, everyone reporting straight to the CTO. Leadership was about to insert a management layer, three EMs, five reports each, and I wanted a seat. I’d left a bigger company where I’d been tech lead across multiple teams, I’d had some great managers (and some not so great), and I’d spent years reading the management canon, preparing for this moment.

Turns out, reading about becoming a manager is like reading about bungee jumping, or riding a roller coaster — it doesn’t quite capture the lived experience.

The first challenge I had to face was performance reviews. Leadership was rolling out new career ladders, which meant telling engineers, some for the first time, that they weren’t meeting the bar. I am conflict-averse to my core, so this was a considerable stretch assignment.

What scared me wasn’t the conversation itself. It was the aftermath: being disliked, judged, found wanting by someone I’d still have to work beside tomorrow. So went back to my preparation playbook and tried to read my way toward competence. Crucial Conversations. Difficult Conversations. Nonviolent Communication. I even attended a workshop on delivering feedback that lands.

It was the steepest learning curve of my life, and it was the biggest step-wise change in my communication skills I’ve ever experienced. I use these skills daily, at work and everywhere else that feedback matters.

Books only got me partway, though. The rest came from people who had already built these skills, and who were willing to talk through the challenges I was facing. I had a deep bench of friends and mentors who helped me try out different approaches, and even rehearse the conversations I was dreading the most.

I remember starting a new role once, inheriting a team with a clear underperformer already on it. My approach is always to build trust before delivering hard feedback, but this time there was no runway for that. I asked a colleague for their advice.

Her advice: skip the choreography. Just tell the person, “normally I’d take time to build trust before saying this, but I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t tell you now, there’s a real gap that needs to close.” It was a great reframe, and got me out of my own experience enough to see that giving feedback isn’t about me — its about the person receiving it, and it could change the trajectory of their career.

Of course, managing for performance is different from coaching. Coaching is about partnership, which is harder when there is a power dynamic between a manager and a direct report. When I coach people, I’m not using the feedback delivery skills I worked so hard to hone. I’m asking simple, open ended questions that help guide someone towards knowing themselves better and solving their own problems.

At the start of goal-setting sessions, I ask, “What will it mean for you to have achieved this goal?” One client went super quiet, and it was clear she hadn’t really thought about it. When she finally answered, it revealed more about what she values, what she believes makes a good life, and what is really motivating to her.

That’s the pattern I keep finding. Connect someone to their why, and goals become clearer and more achievable. Skip it, and even a clean, achievable goal will not be satisfying, or will be put down the moment it gets hard.

So if a burned-out manager caught me in a hallway with sixty seconds to spare, I’d tell her to find her why again. Maybe that means returning to the reason she chose this path in the first place. Maybe it means finding something entirely outside work to fill the well instead. Either way, the fire needs to be stoked.

This is what Keeping Steady is about: honest field notes from someone who’s sat in your chair. No hustle-porn, no five-bullet wisdom. Just what actually helped, and what I wish someone had told me sooner.

If you’re leading through something hard right now, come along. Subscribe below, and hit reply to tell me: what’s your why, and when did you last feel connected to it? I read every response.

Thanks for reading Keeping Steady. I’m Katie, an engineering manager turned coach, writing for the people doing the hardest version of the job.

If this one resonated, two easy next steps:

• Subscribe so the next note lands in your inbox.

• If you’re in the thick of it and want a steady partner in your corner, coaching is exactly what I do. Grab a free, no-pressure discovery call here: cal.com/katie-leonard-northvine/discovery-session

And if a manager you know needs to hear this, forward it their way. That’s how Keeping Steady finds its people.