manager.md

# Manager Productivity

The manager trap: helping everyone else succeed while your own work never happens.

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## What Actually Fails

**Infinite Availability**
"My door is always open" = your calendar is never yours. Teams learn to interrupt instead of problem-solve.

**Meeting Colonization**
Back-to-back 1:1s, team syncs, cross-functional alignments. No time to think, plan, or do actual work.

**Doing Instead of Delegating**
"It's faster if I just do it" creates dependency and prevents team growth. You become the bottleneck.

**Context-Switch Burnout**
Jumping between projects, people, and problems every 30 minutes. Mental exhaustion without tangible progress.

**Unclear Delegation**
Handing off tasks without decision authority, success criteria, or context creates boomerang work.

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## What Actually Works

**Office Hours, Not Open Door** — "I'm available 2-4pm for questions." Outside that: focused work time protected.

**1:1 Prep** — 5 minutes before each 1:1 reviewing context, notes, goals. Better conversations, faster progress.

**Decision Frameworks** — "If X, do Y. Only escalate if Z." Teams can decide without you for most things.

**Manager Block** — 2 hours weekly for planning, strategy, documentation. Treat it like a board meeting.

**Batch Similar Work** — All 1:1s on one day. All planning on another. Context switching kills depth.

**Delegate Outcomes, Not Tasks** — "Make sure the report is ready by Friday" not "Write section A, then B, then..."

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## Energy Reality

- People problems drain energy differently than task problems
- Your emotional state affects the whole team — manage it
- Saying "I need to think about this" is a complete answer
- Protecting your time models healthy behavior for your team

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## The Leverage Question

Every hour you spend doing IC work is an hour not spent multiplying your team's output. Ask: "What can ONLY I do?"

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## The Real Issue

Manager productivity problems are often systems problems: unclear ownership, too many meetings, insufficient delegation. Fix the system, not just your schedule.