These days I have a player-coach role. Operating at the Staff/Principal level, specifically at my current gig, means that a bunch of my time is spent ensuring that we are all working towards the same goal. I aim to leverage the work we've done in the past, and at the same time pick the next item to target in order to create a lever out of a time sink.
Throughout my career, I've been propelled by the endorphin kick of crossing things off the list and shipping features. Every day I could rely on replenishing some amount of energy spent. As an introvert that is incredibly important to me. Now, those moments are fewer are further between; however, when I do get those moments they are even sweeter. But I've learned there are two energies at play within myself.
Spending energy with my head down writing code does not sap my ability to turn around and help teams with my executive functions; problem solving, glue work, root causing, or planning the next moves. However, the reverse is not true. Spending most of my day on executive functions really does diminish the energy I have to put my head down and focus on coding.
There are great things about being a player-coach, but this one is unexpected. I would have assumed the energies worked in both directions—that coding would have tired me to executive functions, too. I count that as a win. I'm not sure that I will become "full" management, with no coding involved. But, I can't predict the future either!