Yep. You should never ever be on the critical path

1. If you don't deliver and you hold up the schedule, you lose authority as a leader because really … if you can't, then you can't expect others. 2. You WILL be diverted to other tasks that will hold you up

Knowing #2 and still causing #1 is fatal.

My biggest energy expenditure is usually right at the beginning of a release cycle, or even a week or two before it when our process is working correctly (a good process means a boring release week).

We will have figured out some big infrastructure or design issue we need to fix and between requirements meetings we code like hell. Blocking people during week 1 or 2 goes a lot better than week 8 or 17.

I've found this to be the single greatest challenge I have as a tech lead. It's incredibly tempting to say "oh, I think I'll have time this week, so I can take that Trello card". If it's on the critical path, leave it for someone else. You won't have time.