Your Calendar = Your Priorities

John Cutler explores how calendars reveal true priorities versus claimed importance, emphasizing that high-performing teams focus on 'valuable' work rather than efficient, certain, customer-facing, time-consuming, or single-task activities. Common time-wasting behaviors include excessive meetings, context switching, 'managing' stakeholders, preparing redundant presentations, and spinning up moderately valuable work to avoid harder challenges. Effective time management characteristics include fostering transparent communication, avoiding micromanaging, creating systems supporting 'aligned autonomy,' making work visible, and minimizing 'heroic' individual efforts that mask systemic issues. The core insight is that 'many organizations are burning TONS of fuel and creating a lot of heat and noise, to do very little.' Engineering leaders will learn to regularly audit how time is actually spent and be willing to pause or redirect work that isn't truly most valuable, recognizing that calendars don't lie about what organizations actually prioritize.