(Time to read: ~ 2 minutes)
This is a celebration and appreciation of what someone else has written on this topic – Paul Graham.
Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer and investor. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia de Belle Arti in Florence.
I’ve highlighted below some of the ideas he presents that I feel so excited about because they match my own experience so precisely! For the complete article, see http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
The Manager’s schedule – “embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour.”
“When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.”
“But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.”
“When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in.”
“But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning…
[A]mbitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.”
Paul goes on to describe how he has dealt with this challenge in his own working life (in effect by setting up two working days – one on a maker’s schedule, one with a manager’s schedule).
Are you a maker? How can you honour what you need to “make” most effectively?
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Would you like support to identify how you can honour your “maker’s schedule” – and then how you can communicate about it effectively to the people in your life? Perhaps I can help.
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