Doing nothing at work · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Science, Technology & Innovation · Jun 8, 2026
Deliberate idleness—maintaining lower baseline intensity and encouraging slow, calm responses—improves incident handling, reduces impulsive errors, fosters idea generation and observation, and makes engineers better prepared for rare high-stress events, implying reliability benefits from spare capacity and calm decision-making rather than urgency theater.
Doing nothing at work · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
Constant busyness—being 100% utilized on low-priority tickets—reduces engineers’ access to high-impact work by causing attention loss and deterring managers from reallocating urgent tasks, so utilization metrics can misleadingly understate strategic contribution.
Doing nothing at work · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Science, Technology & Innovation · Jun 8, 2026
Peak engineering impact comes from being available for narrow, time-sensitive opportunities—so teams should preserve roughly 20% slack (target ~80% utilization) to enable small, high-leverage interventions rather than optimizing for constant ticket throughput.
Doing nothing at work · seangoedecke.com RSS feed
Business, Finance & Industries · Jun 8, 2026
Extra, apparently helpful work—so-called glue work and backchannel favors—can be value-destructive because it masks poor organizational prioritization, extracts uncompensated labor, harms engineers’ careers and well‑being, and rewards freeloaders; the recommended response is to push back (say no, delay, or refuse unstable requests) and focus effort where incentives, recognition, and formal commitment exist.