Are You a Maker or a Manager?

Google calendar was designed for managers. Go to add an event and it defaults to a one-hour blocked appointment. 

This is how a manager fills a productive day. Meetings bump against each other so that they must leave the first 10 minutes early to so they’re not late to the second.

Managers have little difficulty being productive when they jump from one scheduled task to the next. 

As a result, the next meeting for them is nothing more than a practical problem of finding an open spot on the calendar. 

We’re accustomed to working within this schedule because that’s what we’ve been taught. 

Or rather, that’s what has been imposed on us.

But is it the most effective for you?

Makers are the people who produce something that never existed before.

They are writers, programmers, marketers, designers, and engineers (among many others).

Unless you do the same rote task each day, your productivity would probably benefit from adopting the maker’s schedule.

Makers prefer long hours of uninterrupted focus to do their best work. They schedule their time in units of a half-day or more.

The default one-hour time block is usually barely enough time to get started.

Paul Graham first wrote about this idea in his 2009 essay Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule. 

Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager’s schedule, they’re in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.

Think about the work that you do. Are you a manager or a maker?

Advice for managers:

• Get to know your team
• Recognize that a meeting for you costs much less than it does for a maker
• Consider open office hours as a staff meeting alternative

Advice for makers:

• Plan your day around 1-2 projects
• Block off long periods of time to stay focused on one project
• Schedule your work when your energy and motivation is highest