the pilot, the plane, and the engineer

I wanted to share a helpful framework for productivity and time management that I first heard of around five years ago now. It’s the idea of us playing three roles with our time: the pilot, the plane, and the engineer.

When working, we typically play one of three roles:

1. The pilot, who sets the course of the plane

2. The plane itself, who does the actual moving from A to B

3. The engineer, who works to make the plane work efficiently

The Pilot

The framework suggests that we should be spending about 10% of our time being the pilot. Our ‘pilot’ time is the time we spend deciding what to do, blending both our desires and the demands on our time into a set of priorities and a plan of action. I find that pilot time comes to different people at different times and is indicated by a feeling of clarity over what it is that needs to be done. For me, pilot time comes naturally as I close out my working day. I lean into this by using the end of the work day to plan out my priorities for the next day.

The Plane

By far the most time (80%) we should be spending is as the plane. This is when we’re doing what the pilot says we need to do. Our job as the plane is to get off the ground safely, to stay on course, and to land safely. A lot of people struggle with the taking off part of being the plane.

If you’re struggling with taking off, you should read James Clear’s evergreen book Atomic Habits. Combining his concepts of friction and habit stacking provide an effective recipe for combatting issues you might be having getting started with tasks. The basic principle is that you want to find activities that are low friction to start (things that are very achievable and require very little effort) and to then use this to roll into the more difficult stuff. For example, if you want to do 50 push ups every morning, James Clear would suggest you don’t say “I’ll do 50 push ups in the morning”. Instead, he’d want you to say “In the morning, after I brush my teeth, I’ll do 50 push ups”. This way, brushing your teeth, which is a low friction task, becomes the gateway — the start of the chain — that leads into you doing the higher friction task of getting those push ups in. This process of creating a chain of things to do, and the idea that we then create a system in which we just have to push that first domino to knock all the others down, is what he calls Habit Stacking. It’s been immensely useful for me over the years.

Staying on course and landing safely are equally important parts of being the plane. I see these as our ability to stay focused during a task, and our ability to finish a task properly. This is as opposed to not finishing a task properly, which in tech might look like failing to document our work, move our tickets, or communicate properly with stakeholders. Staying on course and landing safely are often equally as challenging as taking off.

The Engineer

The rest of our time, about 5%, should be spent as the engineer. Our engineer time is spent maintaining the systems that help keep both the pilot and the plane operating efficiently. This could be tasks such as organising our inbox or folders. As a product manager, I often find my engineer time is spent organising on JIRA and Confluence, or building lists. I personally find my engineer to be quite easy to access, and I use it to fill free moments I have. I also will sometimes roll into my pilot time with a short burst of engineer time, as I find that organising and maintaining helps me to access the clarity on what needs to be done that the pilot requires to build our course of action.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the pilot and the engineer group well together. If you’ve been paying attention to the proportion of time splits, you will likely have noticed that the split is the classic Pareto principle of 80/20 between the plane and the pilot/engineer when grouped together. This is because, at a more abstract level, we’re talking about the difference between tasks around work, and work itself. It’s just that the tasks around work can be split down into ‘organisation’ (the engineer) and ‘prioritisation’ (the pilot).

I think the big question I first had when hearing about this analogy was “what am I supposed to do with this?”. I was unsure of whether or not this was meant to be front of mind every day, whether I was supposed to be actively thinking “I’m the pilot at this moment” or to tell myself “how about some engineer time now”. This felt like a lot of buy-in to give a concept I wasn’t sure would work. Fortunately, I don’t think that’s how you should be using this framework. I think you should use it to learn something about yourself at a high level. Take some time to think about it now, at a conceptual level, for a good few minutes. When do you find yourself the pilot? What’s hardest for you about being the plane? What do you require of your engineer? How much time are you currently spending as each, and how can you make small changes to how you think about your work to lean into this a little better?

Having an understanding of yourself within the concepts of this framework will allow you to make small but meaningful changes to the way you set up and go about your work. Then, every once in a while when you remember, you can check in again. I have found this to be very beneficial to me and so hopefully it is for you too. Alongside helping me to work better, it also helped me to feel better. If you’re a high performer you’ve often probably felt a little anxious over not being able to keep everything you need to do completely clear in your mind at all times. This framework reminds us that 1. It’s not necessary to do this and 2. It’s normal for us to be completely disengaged from the pilot while being the plane. Instead we just need to know when we’re best at each, to try to set aside time for each, and to submit to each without feeling guilty about the other.