In this 2025 YouTube presentation, engineering leader Gregor Ojstersek identifies the three most damaging productivity pitfalls for engineers and managers: perfectionism, procrastination, and context switching, and adds a bonus discussion on multitasking. For each killer he shares personal anecdotes of how it manifested in his work (e.g., endless visual design tweaks, delayed video creation, frequent interruptions from meetings), explains why it harms output, and offers concrete mitigation tactics. Perfectionism is countered by prioritising progress over flawless results, embracing the 95% rule, and avoiding waiting for perfect moments. Procrastination is tackled by tackling the hardest task first ("eat that frog"), seeking small wins, focusing on daily/weekly goals rather than perfect timing, and adopting a "just do it" mindset. Context switching is managed through time‑boxing (Pomodoro), separating maker‑time from meeting‑time in the calendar, breaking large tasks into smaller chunks, and recognising the cost of interruptions (citing Addy Osmani’s 23‑minute recovery figure). The bonus multitasking segment stresses preserving mental energy, avoiding simultaneous task work, and deferring Slack/email checks until after focused work. The video concludes with a call for viewers to share their own killers, subscribe to the Engineering Leadership newsletter, and promises regular leadership advice.
Chapters
There are many different ways that our productivity gets decreased, and the worst thing is if we don't even notice it. This happened to me a lot of times when I was thinking that I was being productive by doing something, but at the end of the day, nothing really got done. Being busy does not equal to being productive. In this video, we will go over the top 3 biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry, and I'll share my approach to minimizing the effect of them. Let's go straight to the first one. So the first one is perfectionism. I have been dealing with perfectionism for a long time without even knowing. I wanted to make things amazingly well, but at the same time I was never finishing them. I have especially observed myself doing this when I was doing something visual, for example, designing something. It never really looked right to me. The colors, the font combination, the layout, etc. I had similar issues with, with coding as well. As an engineer, I often wanted to write the best code possible, the perfect code. A lot of times that also meant that it was never good enough. How I am naming variables, making abstractions, how I am solving particular problems, it was never really good enough. As a manager, I often found myself waiting for the perfect moments to do something. For example, give certain feedback, discuss a certain issue with the team, and that brought quite a lot of problems as things were not getting better on their own. Do you have or did you have a similar issue? If that's so, I would love to hear that in the comments. So what works for me? Whenever I find myself perfecting, there are 3 different things that I keep in my mind. So the first one is progress is much more important than perfection. The second one is waiting for perfect moments causes more issues than actually doing when it's not perfect. And the third one is that 95% is often good enough for the majority of the cases. 100% just doesn't exist. That shifts my mind and gets me back to making progress. Okay, now let's go to the second biggest productivity killer in the engineering industry. The second one is procrastination. I have found myself procrastinating a lot, a lot of times before. And I sometimes find myself doing that now as well. For example, I even procrastinated creating this video. I believe that everyone deals with this to a certain extent, and, you know, some people more, some people less. I especially noticed that when I first started working fully remotely, getting in the zone is far easier for me to do that in the office than at home. I believe the ability to get things done is really one of the most important abilities for both engineers and managers. And not getting things done is not only bad for the team, but it also takes a big toll on yourself. It can cause quite a lot of stress and can ultimately lead to burning out. So what really works for me? The first thing that, that works for me is to focus on finishing the hardest task first thing in the morning. If I do a morning exercise, then right after I have the most energy in the morning, and if I get the hardest thing done first thing in the morning, that is going to make my day so much better and so much easier. I suggest a book. It's called Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy. The second thing I try to find small wins everywhere. That tends to help me to increase my drive, my motivation, and also gets me going to finish the next task. Once you get the momentum Things become much, much easier. The third one is: I don't focus on perfect timings anymore. I rather focus on achieving daily and weekly goals. For example, a daily goal of mine is to do some form of exercise, and the weekly goal is to create a newsletter article. It doesn't matter if I finish it on Tuesday or if I have it already done. As long as the article is sent out on Sunday, I have achieved my goal. And also the last one: sometimes just do it attitude. Goes a long way. A lot of times we are all overthinking things. And once you get started, the momentum is just going to keep you going and help you to progress. All right. So now that we talked about procrastination, let's get into the third biggest productivity killer, and that is context switching. Context switching is one of the biggest productivity killers because many times we are interrupted and distracted. By a certain thing like changing priorities, meetings, or we just lose focus. I felt that quite heavily as an engineer working on a particular project when requirements changed in the middle of implementing a certain task, or maybe a random meeting just appeared on my calendar. I always needed a lot of time in order to get back in the zone, to remember everything I had done before. Sometimes I also just got distracted and started doing something completely different, which didn't produce the best results as well. The thing is that you just can't avoid context switching because it's also very important that you are there for your colleagues when help is needed. So there are certain ways to minimize it and to manage it. For me, I believe it will be a never-ending process to improve on this. Also, as a manager, I'm doing a lot more context switching daily as an engineer, and I have gotten a lot better at it. So this is what works for me. The first one is time boxing of tasks, Pomodoro technique, a timer with 25 minutes of focus work and 5 minutes of pause. It works really, really well to keep me focused on what I want to achieve. You can be amazed at how much you can achieve just by being focused and sticking to one task until you finish it. Let's go to the second one, and that is meeting time and maker time. I try to reserve my time and combine similar things together. For example, 4 hours for meetings and 4 hours for focus work. A good thing to do here is to also block your time in your calendar. You block it with Focus Time, so everyone knows that at that time you're not available for any other meetings. The third one is break down the bigger tasks into smaller ones, more manageable tasks. That ensures that you can finish the tasks faster. It's also great for everyone reviewing your code because smaller tasks normally mean also smaller changes in the code, and that also means that your PRs are going to get merged faster. Additionally, there's a really great article about context switching written by Addy Osmani, uh, where he shared that it takes 23 minutes to recover after an interruption. I'll share the link to the article in the description. So we talked about perfectionism, procrastination, and context switching. Let's do one more, a bonus one. So the last one is multitasking. Whenever I hear that you need to be good at multitasking to be successful, I just find that to be a bad advice for me. Maybe for some people it's different, but I don't really operate in that way. If I'm trying to simultaneously focus on finishing 2, 3, or even more tasks at the same time, I can just feel my energy being drained from it. I then need a longer break to recharge. I'm also a big believer in preserving your energy and using it strategically throughout the day. If you use all your energy by doing multitasking in the morning, there will be nothing left for the afternoon. Unfortunately, it's unavoidable to some extent, like for example, you are blocked or you're waiting for something, but minimizing it as much as possible is very, very important to me. So this is what works for me. I try not to read Slack messages or emails while I am focusing on finishing a certain task. A lot of times there will be a response needed and you will want to respond to that message. And if you don't respond immediately, you will keep it in your head, which takes some of the energy from you. So it's a lot better if you just don't even look at it in the first place. Finish the task first and only after check your messages, check your emails and respond to them. So a lot of the advice that, that we have also talked about before works for avoiding multitasking as well. Remember, you have limited mental energy every day. Make sure to use it for the right things. What I suggest is to be cautious and preserve it as much as possible. Getting many things done consistently is a lot better than getting a lot of things done sporadically and then needing a longer time to recharge. I'm curious to hear what are your biggest productivity killers. Make sure to share them in the comments. To learn more, you can subscribe to my newsletter. It's called Engineering Leadership, where I share similar tips and advice on how to be a great engineering leader. There are more than 100,000 people already reading it, and I publish 2 new articles every week. Thank you all for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.
