Doing nothing at work
Short summary
The author argues that engineers should target around 80% utilization—avoiding nonstop ticket grinding—to keep bandwidth for time-sensitive, high-impact tasks like unblocking deals or incident mitigation. By deliberately doing “nothing” during low-pressure periods and pushing back on non-prioritized work, you stay alert for the right opportunities and reduce stress-driven mistakes.
- Target ~80% utilization instead of nonstop ticket-grinding, keeping 20% of your day free to catch rare, high-impact moments (unblocking a deal, flipping the right flag to avert an incident).
- Looking "too busy" makes managers route around you; staying visibly available makes them think of you first for critical work.
- Treating every task as an emergency burns you out before real emergencies hit—slowing down (especially on-call) prevents rash, situation-worsening changes.
- Decline unprioritized glue work, backchannel favors, and shifting specs—absorbing them just masks organizational gaps and invites more unpaid work.
Full summary
Many engineers stay at a high utilization rate—cranking through tickets all day—and miss the moments that really move the needle. Sean Goedecke argues that running at about 80% capacity, with 20% of your day away from the keyboard, sets you up to spot and seize rare but massive-impact opportunities. Those might be a quick bugfix that closes an enterprise deal, flicking off the right feature flag to head off a costly incident, or making an obscure tweak that keeps a high-profile feature launch on track. In every case, the work itself is small; its value comes from timing and knowing what matters.
When you’re booked solid on routine tasks, you won’t notice urgent needs. You won’t be in the right chats or reading the updates where people sound an alarm. You also look too busy to get volunteered for important work. Managers and product leads often know where the high-impact fires are burning—you want them thinking, “Sean has room to help.” Staying loose on your calendar makes that happen.
“Doing nothing” isn’t slacking. It’s breathing space for ideas and for suddenly critical tasks. Engineering belts can handle short bursts of intense stress, but if you treat every task as an emergency, you burn out before the actual emergencies hit. On-call newbies, for instance, do better when they pause, take a breath, and think in slow motion. Most incidents calm themselves, and rash changes usually make things worse.
Part of preserving that slack means saying no to unprioritized glue work or backchannel favors. If documentation, cross-team coordination, or pet projects aren’t formally scheduled, stepping in only hides organizational gaps—and invites more unpaid work. Same goes for ever-changing specs or sketchy “big ideas” with no follow-through. Let those issues play out, or delay your response until priorities clear up. Only then do you keep your time free for the handful of tasks that really count.