How spreading across too many paths is quietly stalling your career
The constraint that separates engineers who grow from engineers who stay stuck
The power of constraint
Energy is finite.
It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how many skills you have, how much you want to achieve. At the end of every day, your energy runs out. And when it does, no amount of ambition brings it back.
Here’s something most people don’t fully accept: multitasking is a myth. Your brain isn’t doing two things at once. It’s switching between tasks at high speed - but it’s still sequential. Every switch costs you. Sustained focus costs you less.
Think of energy like a daily budget. You wake up with a fixed amount. The question isn’t whether you’ll spend it. It’s where.
On ten things that move slightly? Or on the one thing that actually moves you forward?
You’d be surprised how many people choose the ten - and wonder why they’re not getting anywhere.
This newsletter is about that choice, and what to do instead.
Two engineers coached - and the same problem
This week I had two Clarity Calls.
A Clarity Call is a 60-minute 1:1 session with me where we work through whatever is blocking you: a promotion you can’t seem to land, a career pivot you’re considering, the IC to manager transition, standing out in a tough job market. If you’re stuck, that’s what the session is for.
Book yours here.
These two engineers came from completely different backgrounds - different cultures, different companies, different career stages. But they had the exact same problem.
Engineer one opened the session saying they wanted to grow to Staff Engineer. Clear enough. But as we talked, the conversation shifted. Their manager wasn’t giving them a clear path to grow. Then doubts crept in about the team. They started considering reporting to their skip level. And then - by the end, they started thinking that maybe they should just leave the company.
Four parallel tracks. All running at once.
Engineer two was wrestling with whether to pursue the manager path or stay IC. Then it came out they’d received feedback suggesting they weren’t cut out for management. Still, they were keeping both paths open - while also wondering if they should change teams, wait it out, or just leave. And notably, they never stopped to ask what specifically led to that feedback about management not being for them, or whether it was even accurate.
Same pattern. Different person.
What struck me wasn’t the confusion - confusion is exactly what my Clarity Call is designed to untangle. What struck me was the energy math. Just to have all those parallel threads in your mind is exhausting. Let along acting on them.
Managers are not exempt - I learned this the hard way
I had a VP I deeply admired. Brilliant, warm, driven - and always busy. She was running a much larger organization than mine, doing far more than I was.
And she kept telling me the same thing.
“You’re doing too much.”
Every time she said it, my internal reaction was the same: you’re doing three times what I’m doing, so what do you mean? I never said that out loud. But I thought it. Every time.
I didn’t understand what she was actually seeing.
At that point I was managing three engineering teams. I was also running the company’s engineering internship program. Involved in hackathons. Helping build the career ladder framework. Committed to move forward cross-functional initiatives that had nothing to do with my core work.
I thought I was performing. I was doing a lot of things, and they were all moving forward.
Then a significant incident happened in production. And when I looked back at what went wrong, the answer was uncomfortable: I hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Not because I didn’t care. Because my attention was spread too thin.
That’s when her words finally landed.
It doesn’t matter how capable you are or how fast you work. Energy is finite. When it spreads too thin, you drop balls. You miss details. You make decisions with less information than you should. The things you are supposed to be directly responsible for start to slip.
After that, I developed a deep respect for people who say “I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now.” That’s not an excuse. That’s self-awareness. That’s protecting the quality of everything they’re already committed to.
Why constraints solved all three cases
For both engineers, the path forward was the same: pick one.
Not because the other options were wrong. But because you cannot give full energy to three orthogonal paths at the same time. You end up giving medium energy to all of them - and medium energy rarely lands anything.
The pushback I hear most at this point: “What if I pick wrong?”
That’s where time-boxing comes in.
You don’t have to commit to a path forever. You commit to it for a defined window. Three months is usually enough. “I’m going to spend the next three months going all-in on finding a new role outside this company. If I don’t find what I’m looking for by then, I’ll revisit.”
That’s not weakness. That’s structure. You’re not closing doors permanently. You’re choosing which one to walk through right now.
For me, the lesson was the same: learn to say “no”. Not to everything - but to the things that dilute the quality of what you’re actually responsible for. The most effective leaders I’ve worked with aren’t doing the most things. They just do fewer things extraordinarily well.
How to think about it - the Odysseus principle
There’s a story from Homer’s Odyssey I love.
Odysseus knew the Sirens were coming. He’d been warned: their song was irresistible. Sailors who heard it steered toward the rocks and died.
He didn’t try to resist on willpower alone. He didn’t trust himself to stay strong in the moment. Instead, he built a constraint into the system. He had his crew plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast - with strict orders not to untie him, no matter what he said or did.
The constraint saved him. Not his intelligence. Not his resolve. The constraint.
This is how I want you to think about your career choices.
You don’t overcome distraction by being smarter or more disciplined. You build the constraint first. You do the soul search. You pick the path. You define what success looks like in a specific window of time. Then you tie yourself to the mast.
The mechanisms are simple:
Soul search: what do you actually want right now, separate from what you feel pressure to want?
Pick one path: not the best path forever, the best path for now.
Time-box it: three months is usually enough to know if it’s working.
Define success: know what “it worked” looks like before you start.
Say no to everything else - or defer it until later.
The people I’ve seen grow fastest in their careers aren’t the ones chasing the most opportunities. They’re the ones who chose one and went all in.
The Sirens are everywhere. Build the constraint. Tie yourself to the mast.
Well said! Totally agree about multi-tasking. It simply doesn’t work and it’s much better to focus on one task or goal at a time. Great strategy here. Thanks for sharing.