This, in my experience, often means advising on several ( >3 ) projects with no (or very minimal) explicit technical commitments. And "no explicit commitments"

This, in my experience, often means advising on several ( >3 ) projects with no (or very minimal) explicit technical commitments. And "no explicit commitments" means you get more freedom to attend conferences, close the door for a generic "I am working, please do not disturb" stretches, take vacation when convenient to you and generally be a master of your time. Getting there may not be easy. IME the best path, especially in larger companies, is to: 1. Be effective and gain wide domain knowledge, so your time is valued and multiple diverse projects want as much of your time as you can spare. This is (relatively) easy. 2. As requests for your time rise, negotiate advisory instead of worker bee roles. Avoid writing code, even when you can do it quickly. Instead architect, mentor, advise, assess, etc. This is tricky. As you transition to advisory roles you need to stay valuable and not turn into one of the folks just hanging around with nothing meaningful to do -- those heads are first on the chopping block. If you stop getting invites to new projects, lean hard on #1 for a while.