The Unexpected Power of Putting the Agenda Down

I used to pride myself on how much I could squeeze into a day—code, write, lead, repeat—until I decided to break the hustle cycle. If my schedule wasn’t full of sprints, syncs, or check-ins, I’d feel almost itchy, like I was falling behind. I kept chasing that sense of “caught up” that never comes. There was always more, and I’d measure myself by how many tasks I closed or how late I stayed online. But in the last few weeks, I started an experiment. What if I ran toward the blank spots on my calendar instead?

Instead of logging another hour in a project tracker, I sat down with people and just talked. No agenda, no “quick asks.” In the beginning, I worried I’d come across as aimless. But those unproductive hours kept pulling me back—partly because, honestly, I needed a break from pretending I was in control of everything.

These reconnection sessions had exactly one rule. No outcomes, no secret networking goals. Just presence. Just listening.

Here’s the trap most of us fall into: sustainable productivity for tech leaders gets sidelined while hustle culture rewards visibility, not sustainability. We feel guilty slowing down, thinking any moment not directly producing output is wasted. The louder you work, the more valuable you look. At least, that’s the myth we’re sold.

The flip came slowly. I started building slow, quiet mornings into my week, just walking and taking notes, or checking in with a teammate with zero pressure. And somehow, those unmeasurable hours have done more for my clarity and creativity than any block labeled “deep work.” I noticed ideas would actually connect instead of just stack. When I finally sat down to code or write, things flowed instead of grinding.

Redefining Output: Energy Is the Metric That Moves Sustainable Productivity for Tech Leaders

When I talk about an energy-based operating system, I mean something direct. For engineering leaders, well-being is a form of output. Not a bonus, not a side effect—the actual foundation. Instead of tracking just hours spent and tickets closed, I started asking: What is my energy level? Am I clear? Am I creative? It turns out that boosting energy management can drive performance—participants in one program saw a 13 percentage point revenue lift over the control group in three months (source). When I make well-being explicit, not optional, the impact on work is measurable, even if the metric isn’t obvious at first.

Think of energy like battery health. You could push the CPU all day, but with a battery near empty, throughput tanks. The system looks busy, but delivery drags. The data doesn’t move. I’ve lived this enough times. I mined my own hours at 3% charge, wondering why things don’t click.

So I had to start tracking new signals alongside my regular deliverables. How clear-headed am I when solving problems, or defending a decision? How creative do I feel when brainstorming with my team instead of just executing? How quickly do I bounce back from setbacks, versus sticking in the rut of “just keep going”? This was a different kind of ROI.

One I can’t quantify, not in the way we’re trained to. But I did notice when I put structured mindfulness routines in place, I felt a small but real drop in stress—enough to last well past the experiment. Structured mindfulness routines produce small to moderate reductions in psychological distress lasting for six months or more, compared to getting no intervention (source). That’s not a sprint finish. It’s a better run, day after day. These signals—clarity, creativity, resilience—became my guide for choosing tasks, defending time for rest, and calling out when the noise was drowning out the signal.

If you’re skeptical about investing time for this, you’re not alone. I keep coming back to the worry: what if my stakeholders push back, or I lose momentum? But here’s what I found. Better thinking means less rework, and stronger output quality. Depleted energy means degraded cognitive updating—after sleep loss, people give less weight to new information when revising their decisions (source). When I’m present and rested, I correct course faster and build better.

So here’s the reframe I keep reminding myself. Presence, agenda-free connection, and rest aren’t distractions from output. They’re the real inputs that lift its quality—day by day, sprint by sprint.

Running on Energy: How to Structure a Week That Actually Endures

Start simple. Before the sprint planning and backlog grooming, block out your week for sustainable high performance by prioritizing energy, not just deliverables. Choose at least one “energy block” each day—an hour where you aren’t toggling Slack or pushing code, but actively refilling. If social health actually moves performance (and it does), schedule relationship time the way you would a system-critical deployment. Treat building connections as a key input, not something you “earn” after the tickets are closed. Draw clear boundaries around your presence-focused time; let your team know this is the moment for real focus, not “quick pings.” The mechanics are simple, but sticking to the intent is the challenge.

For me, it starts with a morning ritual that looks almost lazy on paper. A slow solo breakfast, no phone, just ten minutes to sort the day ahead. I take stock of what’s actually looming, not just what’s on the calendar. That pause to reflect sets the intention, and every single time, I notice better work follows when I clear space for real thought instead of stampeding through to the first call.

This is where I diverge from all the Tim Ferriss scheduling hacks and “deep work” blocks I used to stack up like high-score attempts. For years, I treated everything like an optimization problem—batch tasks, minimize distractions, nail the Pomodoro timer. But here’s the odd truth. Unstructured connection time, especially when it’s agenda-free, has consistently delivered sharper insights and stronger team trust than any hyper-optimized sprint. I used to think every hour had to be justified on paper.

Turns out, the messier hours—the ones spent just catching up with a teammate or walking without a podcast—were the ones that actually moved big decisions forward. It’s strange, but the results are hard to ignore. Clarity in the codebase, fewer misunderstandings, and a bit more breathing room in the week.

If you ever need to defend these “blank blocks” to your team or stakeholders (and you will), stay direct. “This agenda-free time leads to clearer decisions and fewer reversals. It’s not downtime. It’s preventive maintenance.” The first few times you say that, it might feel risky. Nobody gets pushback for running another sprint, but trust this outcome.

At the close of the week, run a short energy retro. Note down moments of clarity, bursts of creativity, or how quickly you bounced back from setbacks. Use those not as applause lines, but as signals. Adjust next week’s blocks based on where your energy spiked, not just where the output landed. See what changes when you use these signals to inform your schedule.

The bottom line: Running your week from energy, not just from output, is the path to sustainable productivity for tech leaders. Like any OS upgrade, it takes real buy-in. But the payoff is better decisions, stronger output, and a team that knows their well-being is valued as much as their “done” column.

Applying Energy-Based Work in the Real World

Here’s a shift that took me by surprise. As a software engineer, swapping out just one sprint hour for a midweek walk—with an agenda-free chat—did more than it “should.” Clarity kicked in, and the small product bugs that used to trail each release basically vanished. Reviews sped up, not because the code was better, but because my head actually was. The hours that “don’t count” might be the ones that carry you further.

If you’re leading people, try protecting one “presence” 1:1, no bullet points or planning allowed. You’ll notice early signals of misalignment, sometimes before anyone names the problem. It’s those conversations—before status gets stuck—that keep churn lower later on. If it feels unnatural at first, hang in; the benefit hits after slowing down.

Tech leads and teams, want something concrete? Introduce a weekly energy check-in as part of energy management for engineers. Track clarity and resilience right next to your list of deliverables. It’s not complicated. Once those signals go in the mix, you start noticing architectural debates are less reactive, and decisions hold steady. This move isn’t fluffy; it’s a practical way to catch drift before it becomes “how did we end up here?” Again, put the metric where people can see it and let them talk about it. Sometimes, checking in on energy stabilizes your sprint better than any burndown chart.

For AI practitioners (and honestly, anyone deep in the technical weeds), balancing focused model work with true exploratory rest isn’t an indulgence. It’s part of the pipeline now. By treating novelty and insight as outputs, not distractions, you build in room for new connections. That time wandering through unrelated papers or frameworks—the kind you’d never justify on a roadmap—often builds the intuition you need for breakthroughs.

And just like those early calendar experiments, the shift sneaks up on you. The default urge is still to prove output in hours and checkboxes. I don’t have a perfect system for quieting that habit. Even now, I pause before clearing space each week—there’s always a faint worry about what’s being left undone.

Here’s the constant through every example: this system scales because the constraint is energy, never just hours. Everyone levels up after slowing down.

Defending Guilt-Free Productivity: Choose Energy as Your Core Output

Reframing rest as a priming tool—not just recovery—was what unlocked productivity without burnout for me. Instead of treating downtime as something you earn or need after burning out, see it as an input that actually ramps up the quality of your thinking. When I did this, I started scheduling recharge time the way I used to schedule crunch time, and my best decisions started there.

If you want to try this for a week, here’s the approach. Block off two slots—just agenda-free reconnection time with a teammate or even yourself. Add a slow breakfast to your daily routine. Track each day on a sheet. Note your energy, clarity, and any moment of creativity right alongside your list of deliverables. Keep it simple. Run it like any tech experiment—see what holds up, what needs tweaking.

When someone asks about this new way, stay clear. “We optimize for clarity and creativity because they cut back rework and push our output higher.” That’s the move (Framing cuts down the back-and-forth cycle), which stabilizes iteration and ultimately the outcome. Admit it openly. It’ll feel counterintuitive the first few times you say it.