How do I protect deep work time during an incident or production issue?

Incidents break the template — that's appropriate. The goal isn't rigid adherence but a default structure. After an incident resolves, do a quick reset: can you still complete a 45-minute focus session before the next commitment? Even partial recovery of the template's deep work time produces better outcomes than abandoning it entirely.

What if standup is mandatory at a time that breaks my morning flow?

Schedule your deep work for before the standup. Even 60–90 minutes of pre-standup focus time is significantly better than no morning deep work. Adjust the template to place your first block between waking and the standup time.

Should code reviews be in the deep work block or the lighter block?

Complex architectural code reviews requiring serious analysis belong in a deep work block. Routine implementation reviews can go in the lighter block. The distinction matters: low-quality code reviews done quickly have downstream costs (bugs, technical debt) that exceed the time saved.

How do I handle days with more meetings than normal?

Protect one 60-minute block as your minimum viable engineering session. Even on heavily meeting-scheduled days, identify one window — often early morning or late afternoon — and commit to one focused block. This prevents meeting-heavy days from becoming zero-deep-work days.

Template for Software Engineer

Daily schedule template for software engineers: protect deep work around the standup

A time-blocked daily schedule for software engineers: morning deep work, standup, code review, and afternoon implementation. Includes focus session guidance and energy tips.

The engineering day problem: deep work around meetings

Software engineering requires extended concentration for its highest-value work: designing systems, writing complex code, debugging subtle problems, reviewing pull requests with nuance. The typical engineering calendar — morning standup, afternoon planning, occasional incident response — fragments the day in ways that systematically undercut this work. The most productive engineering days are those where deep work happens before any meeting occurs, and the standup is moved to the natural break after the first focus block. Engineers who establish this pattern consistently report higher output quality and lower end-of-day cognitive fatigue than those who work around scattered meetings.

The template: a high-output engineering day

A high-output engineering day follows this structure: 8:00–9:30am — deep work, first block (complex feature work, architectural thinking, the hardest problem of the day). 9:30–9:45am — standup and async communications catchup. 9:45–11:15am — deep work, second block (continuation of morning focus or code review requiring full attention). 11:15am–12:00pm — communications, pull request reviews, planning updates, lighter cognitive work. 12:00–1:00pm — lunch away from screen. 1:00–2:30pm — implementation block (less cognitively demanding coding, documentation, testing). 2:30–5:00pm — reactive work, deployment tasks, team discussions, end-of-day review.

Protecting the morning blocks from standup creep

The most common failure mode for this template is standup creep — the daily standup expanding into 30+ minutes of discussion that eliminates the pre-standup block. Effective protection: keep standup strictly time-boxed (15 minutes maximum), move complex technical discussions to separate dedicated meetings, and treat the standup as a status exchange rather than a problem-solving session. If your team's standup regularly runs long, advocate for a structured format (what I did, what I'm doing, blockers) and a separate time for discussion items. Protecting the pre-standup block is where most of the daily template's value lives.

Logging focus sessions for engineering work

Engineering focus sessions benefit from specific task labeling: 'implement OAuth flow in auth module' rather than 'work on feature.' The specificity helps with post-session evaluation — was this session useful? — and produces meaningful data over weeks. Common engineering session patterns: a 90-minute session that completes a feature implementation, followed by a 45-minute session for the associated tests, followed by a 30-minute documentation session. Each has different cognitive demands and deserves its own session log. Using today's session tracking for engineering work creates a picture of your actual implementation capacity per day that sprint planning rarely has access to.

Frequently asked questions