How low will you go?

In project management—I think—you can go all the way down to the level where you're doing all the work and writing all the code. But can you really "manage" the project if you're in it? Probably not.

A coworker is making me think about how low I will go on this. Will I write code? Will I talk to the dev team about the solution? Will I design the solution? Maybe as long as I REFUSE to write code, I'll be fine. That is high enough level and I can insure that others and not me write the code and produce the project. I have to stay high-level and be a manager, not a doer.