Recently, I finished reading a book on leadership called Staff Engineer by Will Larson. There’s a chapter titled “Work on what matters” that really resonated with me. It discusses how to focus on work that is more impactful, or as the book describes is, more energising for you, and teaches about “Snacking”. While the chapter is primarily for helping senior engineers understand where to focus their efforts, I believe its insights can apply across different roles and industries. In this post, I’ll explain what Snacking is and how we should approach it at work.

We all know that too much snacking is bad for our health. We enjoy a snack every now and then because it satisfies our cravings and gives us that instant gratification. We’re also aware that relying on snacks as our main source of food is unhealthy, as it lacks the nutrients and protein our bodies need.

Let’s apply the same idea to our work. Every now and then, we come across easy tasks that we can finish quickly to get that instant sense of accomplishment. However, doing only easy tasks is “unhealthy” for our careers, as it lacks the challenges and opportunities we need to improve our career posture.

At work, this can show up in statements like:

“This task will take only 30 minutes.”

“I’ll finish it in half a day at most.”

“This one is easy, it will only take me less than 2 hours.”

Most of us like to pick up easy tasks now and then because it helps us tolerate the harder ones in our day-to-day work. Work is already challenging, so why not reach for some low-hanging fruit every once in a while? However, we need to be mindful of the impact on our careers if we constantly choose easy tasks—just as we know that too much snacking can negatively affect our health. With moderation, you can have a healthy, growing career just as you can maintain a healthy body with occasional snacking.

So, how do we know if we’re “Snacking” at work? That’s where the impact/effort graph comes in!

In 2016, Hunter Walk, co-founder of Homebrew, had a conversation with Intercom’s Head of Growth where he drew the impact/effort graph which later became everyone’s favourite reference.

His graph divides work into four quadrants based on two factors: impact and effort. The top two quadrants represent high-impact work with varying levels of effort, while the bottom two quadrants represent low-impact work. The “perfect quadrant” is the top-left one, which showcases work that is both impactful and easy to complete (ah if only we had more of them!). However, the “perfect quadrant” is often rare in mature organisations, so high-impact work is typically accompanied by high effort (i.e., the top-right quadrant). This high-effort, high-impact work is where business strategies live. It’s where your team identifies key objectives and plans out how to achieve them.

Now, let’s turn to the two bottom quadrants. Most businesses are cautious and avoid the high-effort, low-impact work, and you should too. This type of work demands a lot of effort for relatively little value.

These could look like:

• Spending days to weeks on documentation with no clear business objective.

• Refactor an entire codebase for days with no strong reasons behind it.

Now let’s zoom in on the bottom-left quadrant — Sna