> By the time Friday rolls around, you’ve done nothing tangible, produced nothing meaningful, and yet you’re exhausted
Here is what I do: for every day, I have a 4 hours long blocker in my calendar, which says "do work". My calendar is public for everyone, so it's not just a blind blocker. Any invitation I receive in this period are rejected, I don't even read them. At the start of this period I go offline, and I do actual work, i.e. coding, deployments, whatnot. Everything that's not bullshit - and I do it in peace. At the end of this period I go back online, and continue wasting my time.
I don't do it every day, but at least 2 days a week. It can be hard to assert yourself well enough to do this in some organizations, especially as a junior. It should be normal for individual contributors to have 4-hour blocks in their calendars (managers live by meetings, though).
