Struggling with burnout? Procrastination? Reaching your goals? Let me share a few methods that help me actually get things done in the long run. An...
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@sylwia-lask great read!!
I would totally agree on not working on weekends . I learned this in a hard way. Start of my career i used to work all weekends and stopped enjoying myself and my life . But i realised i am not going anywhere with this . I created some hobbies , travelling , gaming so i will just free of work and not think abt it at all .
Thanks, Varshith! And exactly! 😄 I even like to let myself get bored sometimes. That's usually when I suddenly start coming up with ideas for a trip, going somewhere, getting out of the house, whatever.
And I can really relate to the “stopped enjoying myself and my life” part. You'd think that at least all that extra work would make you more productive and get things done faster... but somehow it doesn't 😂
true it will never be less work ....
yeah i guess getting bored is also a privilege .
I mostly get my ideas when I am abt to sleep 😂...
Exactly! 😂 Or you struggle with a problem for hours, can't find a solution, finally give up and take a break... and then you're walking through the forest and suddenly the solution just appears in your head out of nowhere 😄
I second this. I’m started to get the feeling of burnout about 3 months ago, and just recently cut out coding on the weekends and planning me week a little better. It’s given me a little more of me back. And my wife likes that.
It's very interesting—and at the same time, it's just common sense—everything we want to tell others, to advise our children—but we all too easily forget that it applies to us as well—especially to us, or first and foremost to us, I'd even be tempted to say. Thanks for reminding us!
Exactly, Pascal! 😄 Nobody would tell their kid, “Just work yourself into the ground, sacrifice your weekends, and never stop pushing!” 😂 And yet, somehow, we give ourselves exactly this kind of advice surprisingly often. Maybe we should start treating ourselves with the same common sense we'd use when advising our kids 😄
"Yeah, but it's not the same for me… I'm an adult, I know what I'm doing." – You didn't actually say that, did you?
Hahahaha I assume we all said that to ourselves at some point of our live 😅
Hey @sylwia-lask , I came here expecting productivity tips and somehow left with permission to do less 😂
“Do less than you could” is dangerous advice for developers though... my brain is already planning a refactor for doing nothing more efficiently 😭
Me too. I've started working on an optimization plan for doing nothing, like this:
A. Eliminate all irritating factors and related sub-tasks.....
But point F. has become a blocker. it's with: to get rid of recursive thoughts about work on the weekends. :)))
Oh no, point F is definitely the worst one!!! I think we've reached the limits of optimization here. The only solution left is two weeks of vacation 😄
I like this solution!
And that's exactly how it should be 😂 You officially have my permission to rest today! 😄
Haha, permission officially granted 😂 Now I just need to convince my developer brain that “doing nothing” is not a bug 😭
follow mi!!!!! i am stealing this
Now you've got me curious! 😂 Can't wait!
no i mean, you wrote " mi " instead of " me ", is that on purpose? 😭
hahahaha now I see it! It's a typo, that's how you will type "me" in polish 😅🤣🤭
yah, im stealing that. I'm in the process of writing my next article and i'm gonna hide a " mi " in there 🤭
and i learn something new today too
Haha perfect! So I'm definitely leaving "mi" as it is here 😁
Hi Sylwia,
this article hit on the right time, maybe could be better before :)
great tips.
for a while, i feel floating. not at work, i am so busy and quite productive, but maybe due to this, i am so inclined to NOT work on my side projects, personal targets, etc... Logical, but not helpful in the long run.
this was a great list. Especially, these resonate with me a lot
i loved the sample "being staff eng. at google". So correct. in every way.
I also loved and totally get the idea of "trying to do less than you could" (or maybe you THINK you COULD). This is also my issue. You see, i am so keen on planning, so keen that i mostly write more than i could (and i keep sanity)... And mostly fail to break it into crumbles, easy to swallow.... for days like these, when i am so tired and busy at work, this is bad and unproductive.
planning the week in advance. Again a good idea. I was doing this, for many years. but again filled in too much in a single week, then gave up planning the week and did it for a month.. But you see, a month is longer and you can fill in more, and in my case, more than a single-month should take... so this becomes a loop...
thanks again.
wish you luck in the conf. you sincerely deserve being among these great eng.s
Thanks so much, Alptekin! 😊 And yes, this is exactly why I thought this post might resonate with quite a few people. I'm honestly getting tired of this whole “hustle culture”. And I totally get what you're saying about planning too much. Planning is great until we start treating every empty space in the plan as something that needs to be filled 😅 That's exactly the trap I keep falling into myself.
Thanks again, and thank you so much for the kind words about the conference! ❤️I don't know if I deserve it, but they invited me there, so I guess it's not that bad 😆
Hi Sylwia! 👋
Thank you so much for this incredibly refreshing and mature article! Your approach to applying engineering concepts like "MVP" and "Definition of Done" to personal productivity is absolutely brilliant. 🧠✨
The point about setting "embarrassingly achievable goals" really resonated with me. It’s such a powerful way to bypass procrastination and maintain long-term consistency without burning out.
Wishing you continued success in all your projects, and most importantly, enjoying your free weekends! 😁 Please keep sharing these grounded, practical, and human insights.
Best regards!
🌊🗻🧊🐟
Thank you so much! 😊 And exactly, we really don't have to sacrifice ourselves to achieve something! It's possible to make progress, stay consistent, and still have a life outside of work 😄
Thanks again for such a lovely comment! ❤️
I like your article
It's so relatable. Keep at it
Thanks a lot ☺️
I am the one who has to thank you :)
Well, I let my natural rythm take over, and work when I feel the energy to do so, or take one afternoon free. Surprisingly, I achieve more in the next 2 hours after a short walk, than sitting in front of my computer and trying to make the square round. But all in all, I do punch at least 40-50 hours of work a week.
Exactly! The worst part is that if I don't give myself that free afternoon, I often don't get much done anyway.I just sit there thinking about how much I still have to do, and somehow that alone makes me exhausted 😂 Then after some actual rest, I can sometimes get more done in two focused hours than I would have in an entire tired afternoon.
I think that is the best schedule to follow: work when you have the energy, don't do more than 2 hours without a break to watch 15 min. of youtube or play a hand of solitaire, then come back and do the next 2 hours. It works wonderfully and my productivity is pretty high, I finally managed to publish my SaaS, which I built from scratch.
The “deliver only what you're asked for” one really hit me.
I tend to over-engineer things, especially when I'm genuinely interested in the problem. Sometimes the extra effort is exactly what makes the project better. Other times… I'm just solving problems nobody asked me to solve 😅
Definitely taking that one with me.
Oh yes, that's such a common problem in our industry! 😅 I do exactly the same thing, especially when there are no clear requirements and I'm free to invent them myself 😂
I once wrote an article about building an AI agent without frameworks, and I was immediately tempted to add MCP support and a local model too xDDD Luckily, laziness saved me. I already had a working agent and simply couldn't be bothered to build more 😂
Eventually I thought: wait, I can always add MCP later, turn it into another article, and the original one will actually be easier for readers to follow.
And guess what? It ended up being one of my highest-ROI articles ever 😂 It got featured in several newsletters, helped me get invited to speak at a conference, and AWS even featured me somewhere because of it and sent me a T-shirt xDDD
So yes. Sometimes “good enough, ship it” really does win 😄
Haha, “laziness saved me” I might have to remember that one. And turning the extra features into a follow-up article is actually a great idea.
I love the honesty here 😄 Productivity is rarely about squeezing more tasks into the day. Sustainable habits, knowing when to slow down, and finding what actually works for you can make a much bigger difference. And congrats on AGNTCon + MCPCon Europe! That’s a pretty impressive September lineup.
Thank you so much! 😄 And exactly, I think sustainable habits make a much bigger difference in the long run than trying to squeeze every possible productive minute out of the day. Sometimes slowing down is actually part of the strategy!
Thank you, Sylwia 🙂 The meetup example is the one that stuck with me. Reading it, I realized the big goal never actually left - "be someone who speaks" is still sitting right there, unnamed, and that's what made a meetup the right step and not a random one. So maybe it's not the goal that shrinks. It's the step.
And the same word keeps shifting under me: "achievable" seems to depend less on the goal than on who's standing in front of it. "Give a talk" is a small step for someone who loves a stage. For someone who wants it just as badly but fights for every sentence, it's the same step and a whole different climb.
Which is a kinder way to read a slow start - not behind, just further up the hill 🙂
Starting your public speaking journey at a meetup actually serves another purpose too. At most conferences, people pay for tickets, often quite a lot, so organizers need to be reasonably confident about their speakers. They need some proof that you'll deliver a good talk, stay within your time slot, and generally know what you're doing 😄 A meetup gives you a chance to build exactly that kind of track record.
And as for the stress... unfortunately, I don't think it ever completely goes away 😅 You can walk onto a stage for the hundredth time and still spend those few minutes beforehand questioning all your life choices 😂
Amazing suggestions! I can totally agree with the 5th point. Refactoring and improving the code always come to mind as a developer. That thing: I can make it more amazing. Sometimes it breaks even the running instance, or the stakeholders don't even care about your extra efforts
Hahaha exactly! 😂 The stakeholder somehow doesn't appreciate that our beautiful, perfectly refactored code broke production...
BUT LOOK HOW CLEAN IT IS!!! 🤣
Great list, Sylwia! #5 and #6 hit hardest for me; "know what done means before you start" sounds so obvious, but I've burned entire weekends over-polishing something nobody actually asked for. There's a weird guilt attached to not going the extra mile, like you're cheating somehow, even when the extra mile wasn't part of the job.
The "embarrassingly achievable goals" point is underrated advice too. A lot of burnout comes from setting outcome goals (be a Staff Engineer) instead of process goals (ship this one thing this week); the first one gives your brain permission to freeze.
Exactly! I fall into the “going the extra mile” trap all the time too, and I have to consciously stop myself 😅 Especially with commercial work, I've learned to stick to a very simple rule: if nobody asked for it, I don't do it.
It still sometimes feels like I'm being lazy or could have done “more”, but most of the time that extra effort wouldn't actually bring any extra value anyway 😄
Productivity isn't always about adding more tools or squeezing more tasks into the day. Sometimes the biggest gains come from changing how we structure the work itself. The point about focusing on what actually improves outcomes rather than just staying busy really resonates.
Exactly! You can be incredibly “busy” all week and then realize that, somehow, you haven't actually moved anything forward 😅 Being busy and being productive are definitely not the same thing.
Great points! I especially agree with “doing less than you could” and setting embarrassingly achievable goals. Consistency is much easier to maintain when you leave enough room to rest and avoid burnout. The idea of defining what “done” means is also a great reminder for developers.
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Exactly! 😄 Life isn't only about self-improvement and constantly becoming a “better version of yourself.” Sometimes you're allowed to just live and enjoy it too! 😄
The “do less than you could” point is probably the most underrated one here.
In engineering, we often optimize for maximum throughput when we should be optimizing for sustainable throughput. A system that runs at 100% utilization has almost no room for retries, incidents, unexpected work, or recovery. People are not that different.
I also like the “know what done means” rule. A surprising amount of procrastination is really an undefined completion condition. If “learn Kubernetes” or “improve the system” has no measurable endpoint, there is no natural point at which your brain gets to declare victory.
For senior engineers especially, knowing what not to do is often a more valuable productivity skill than finding another way to do more.
Oh yes! The “learn Kubernetes” or “improve the system” examples resonate with me especially 😄 Particularly when, in our heads, they grow into these gigantic tasks with no clear checkpoints along the way. Oh, how many times I've fallen into that trap 😂
And sometimes I even knew exactly what needed to be done, but the task just felt soooo huge that my brain basically went: “Nope, we're not starting this today.” 😅
“Do less than you could” might be the hardest productivity tip here 😂
Whenever I suddenly have some free time, my first instinct is to fill it with another project. Then somehow I’m surprised when I’m tired later.
Maybe leaving some capacity unused is actually part of being productive.
Exactly, that's my problem too! 😂 But seriously, when I let myself get a little bored, two things happen: first, I actually WANT to do something again, and second, the ideas I come up with are genuinely better.
When I'm overloaded, I just rush through everything to get it done. Leaving some capacity unused really does seem to make the work itself better.
The admin work part of point 2 is the one nobody warns you about. Any success at all and suddenly you're running a small unpaid logistics company on top of the actual thing. I run an agency, so in theory I knew this. The emails still won.
Hahaha, right?! I genuinely never expected this part 😂 And then you also have to remember who you emailed, when to follow up, what you're still waiting for, what you need to remind someone about... 😭
I finally understand why people hire assistants. Unfortunately, I'm not quite rich enough for that yet 😂
Bad news from the other side of that hill: I have assistants and the emails still found a way 😅 They just multiply until whoever's inbox exists is full. The only thing that half works for me is keeping the follow-up list outside the inbox entirely, because the inbox is where reminders go to die 🪦📧
“Do less than you could” might actually be the hardest productivity advice to follow. The goal isn’t doing less for the sake of it, but leaving enough capacity to stay consistent when life gets busy. Consistency beats short bursts of overwork.
Exactly! And if you want to stay consistent, you simply can't work all the time. That's not even philosophy, it's... physiology! 😂 Our brains and bodies need time to recover. Short bursts of overwork might feel productive, but they're not sustainable in the long run.
5 is the one that actually matters.
I tracked my "productive" hours for a month. Turns out I was "working" 10 hours a day but only shipping for 3.
The other 7 hours? Meetings, Slack, "quick questions," and context switching.
Now I block 4 hours every morning. No Slack. No meetings. No exceptions.
My output tripled. My hours halved.
The counterintuitive part isn't that it works. It's that we already know this and still don't do it.
Oh yes, that's a golden rule! I struggle with exactly the same thing: calls, Teams, “quick questions" 😅 The funniest part is that sometimes when I set my status to “busy,” people actually ask me: “What are you so busy with?” 😂
And I completely relate to the hours thing too. If I don't deliberately plan some time off, I end up in exactly that state: I'm exhausted just from constantly thinking about all the things I still have to do. So in the end, I don't actually get that much done... but somehow I'm tired all the time anyway 😂
The "busy" status paradox is so real. And the tired-but-not-productive cycle is exactly what happens when you confuse activity with output. I started tracking my deep work blocks too — turns out 3 focused hours beats 10 "busy" hours every time. The guilt of closing Slack is real though.
The 'do less than you could' point hit harder than expected. I've been running a pretty heavy content schedule alongside studying for a certification and building projects, and the moment my calendar gets lighter I immediately look for what else to fill it with. The book trap is real. Going to try the deliberate boredom thing on weekends, though I'm skeptical I'll last more than an hour before opening VS Code... 🫠
Hahaha, it can be surprisingly difficult 😄 But when I actually manage to sit there and do nothing for a while, sometimes such great ideas start popping into my head that I never regret it.
The real challenge is resisting the urge to open VS Code (Kiro in my case) the moment one of those ideas appears 😂
The interesting part is that productivity advice often fails when it treats energy like a constant resource. I’ve found that the better question is sometimes not “How can I work more?” but “What kind of work is worth doing with the energy I have?”
The idea of deliberately stepping away from the computer is especially counterintuitive for developers.
Exactly! The older I get, the more I realize that we simply have a limited amount of energy. You can't keep treating it like an infinite resource and expect nothing to happen.
The “do less than you could” point really hit home. Productivity is often treated as doing more, but protecting your energy and keeping a sustainable pace can actually help you stay consistent for much longer.
I also liked the idea of setting “embarrassingly achievable goals.” Breaking a huge goal into something small enough to actually start makes a big difference.
Great reminder that productivity isn't about filling every free minute, sometimes leaving space is what helps you do better work. 👏
Exactly! Especially the small goals. I don't know if you experience this too, but whenever I set myself some huge goal that's still very far away, I might as well sit down and do nothing 😅 Just thinking about the amount of work it would take to get there can be completely paralyzing.
Give me one small, achievable next step, though, and suddenly it's much easier to actually start 😄
in this era of AI the management expect us to do more and more and more
Management has always expected you to do more, they now have a magic wand “use AI”. I know because I am in management. :) Unfortunately, that’s how business for profit works. My engineers complain about this all the time but trust me I have a boss too and they have a boss and so on
Hahaha, totally! 😂 In my case, writing the actual code often takes 5 minutes now, especially with AI. But before that, I spend 5 hours gathering and clarifying the requirements, and then another 8 making sure everyone is actually happy with the result xD
Your coding time has now shifted to
Right? :)
5 and 6 are really one tip, and together they're the strongest thing on this list. "Deliver only what you're asked for" is only safe advice once "done" has been agreed, because otherwise what you were asked for is just whatever the client remembers saying, and that tends to change on demo day.
One distinction I'd add to 5, though: there's a difference between gold-plating and baseline. Nobody asks for error handling, retries, or a rollback path. Clients don't know to ask, so it never shows up in the requirements, but it isn't extra either. Cutting the feature nobody wanted saves you a week. Cutting the thing nobody thought to mention costs you a weekend, usually at a bad hour.
Which loops back to 6 nicely. If "done" includes the unglamorous parts from the start, you never have to make that call under pressure.
And congratulations on the conference. Enjoy it.
Exactly! And this is where the “definition of done” becomes really important. Things like error handling, retries, rollback paths, etc. should already be part of what “done” means, even if the client doesn't explicitly ask for them.
Gold-plating is more like: “Oh, let's add this too! And maybe an icon here! And actually, wouldn't it work even better if we changed this?” 😅
When I was a junior, I once restyled parts of a client's app because I thought it was... ugly 😅 The client didn't like it, and my manager had to explain what happened. Fortunately, it was easy to revert and nobody got hurt, but I still cringe a little whenever I remember it.
Although, if anyone asks, my version was prettier 😛
This is one of those articles that makes you pause and rethink what we’ve been taught about productivity. You’ve managed to turn something so practical into a genuinely human reminder: productivity isn’t about squeezing every possible ounce of work out of yourself; it’s about building a pace you can actually sustain.
And honestly, the way you connected engineering concepts like MVP and “Definition of Done” with life was brilliant. 😄
You have a really rare ability to explain technical and career lessons without making them feel like another productivity lecture. There’s a lot of experience, honesty, and personality behind your writing, and that’s what makes your posts so enjoyable to read.
Keep writing, Sylwia. Some people write to share information; you write in a way that makes people stop, reflect, and see things differently. That’s a much rarer skill. 👏
Thank you so much! ❤️ That really means a lot to me. And yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to achieve with these kinds of articles. If someone finishes reading and stops for a moment to think about something a little differently, then I'm happy 😊
I'm retired, but I've already spent years doing all this 🙂
Sadly, many people still cling to the “no pain, no gain” mentality, ruining their lives for something they may never have time to enjoy.
Exactly! And now, looking at it from retirement, would you honestly advise today's 25- or 30-year-olds: “Work beyond your limits, give up your life, and maybe one day you'll achieve SUCCESS”? 😄
I suspect the answer would be no 😂
I'm afraid this kind of question is too much subject dependent... :)
I know also people really enjoying to live in a mess, overhelmed 24/7 by badly planned jobs and unexpected events, imho anyone should look for a proper "confort zone" (not like "sit on a couch and get money for free :D )
I love that you highlighted consistency. That has been my word ever since I started learning and working in the tech industry. Looking back, I even made a little reminder for myself on how many days has it been on one of my websites.
Turns out I’m at my 516th day already. I hope this inspires others as well to keep progressing little by little each day.
Thanks for this comment, Elmar! 😊 In my opinion, this is exactly what works best and brings the best results in the long run: little by little, but consistently! Because let's be honest, when we constantly push ourselves too hard, we sacrifice our time, energy, and health, and eventually we burn out anyway and end up achieving less. 516 days is a perfect example of what consistency can do!
Great insights here 💡 Definitely bookmarking this for later! 🔖
Aww thanks!!!
MVP-for-life tip is underrated. Devs gold-plate PRs nobody asked for then wonder why review takes forever. Ship the ask, iterate later if it's actually needed.
Exactly!!! Ship what was actually asked for first. If the extra improvement is really needed, you can always add it later. No need to solve problems nobody has yet 😂
The weekend advice is so true. Sometimes doing nothing is exactly what we need. 😄
Exactly! 😄 And we really shouldn't feel guilty about it.
My favorite is "Do less than you could." 🙃
Mine too! That's why it's first on the list 😁
This is a good wish list, but software development is more like this - you have a job, you work hard. Then there are times, when is summer or You learn something new 🤷
Do you mean specifically freelance work? I guess the dynamics can be quite different there.
I've worked at startups, and it was often the opposite: there was enormous pressure to deliver something quickly, even when all the estimates clearly showed it wasn't realistic. In the end, people worked way beyond their limits, put in extra hours, and... we still didn't make it 😅 Mostly because rushing introduced so many bugs that we ended up losing the time we'd supposedly saved.
And honestly, I have a feeling the age of AI agents won't change this as much as we might hope 😄
In my projects, the more I have done and the more I am responsible for, the more pressure I get. To software development age of AI agents has added hardware worth trillion dollars. The solutions have become way more complex and expensive.
@sylwia-lask Very realistic! not like classic textbook productivity tips.
I was about work on weekends, but your read got me into thinking!
Hahaha, great! 😄 Then definitely think twice about that weekend work! Maybe doing nothing is the more productive choice this time 😂
I don't comment at all in any post but in this one, i need to say that this post it's really great hahah, i hope some day could i write some blog like this one 😃
Wow, thank you so much! 🥹 Comments like this really make me want to keep writing! And of course, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your own writing too. I hope I'll get to read your blog someday!
The hardest one for builders is probably “do less”. There’s always another feature, another tool, another thing to optimize, but leaving some space usually makes the next session much better.
Exactly! 😄 For me, there's always another article to write, another demo to build, and then I start thinking, “Maybe I should get into YouTube too? Maybe I could also do this...” 😂
But at some point you have to stop adding things. Life is simply too short to turn every free moment into another project 😄
This is a test comment for debugging purposes only.
Great content. This kind of data-driven analysis is rare in the dev community. We need more posts like this.