In a 2009 essay, venture capitalist Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, described the fundamental difference between “makers’ schedules” and “managers’ schedules.”
I reread Graham’s essay periodically, and every time I come back to it I am reminded how revolutionary it is — even in today’s world.
In this essay, Graham is really speaking to the differences in rhythm in how people work.
Makers vs Managers
Makers — programmers, writers, and others who create things— need long, uninterrupted blocks of time to create. They need to incubate ideas, marinate them, and sit with them.
Makers think of time in terms of long blocks — several hours or a half a day.
In contrast, managers’ days are typically sliced into short time slots for meetings and discrete tasks.
Our culture defaults to the belief that the manager schedule is the “norm.” The corporate world considers time in units of 1 hour or less. Most physical calendars are set up with time divided into 1 hour slices. Even digital calendars default to this standard.
As a result, makers are often forced to adapt to a manager schedule.
This has outsized effects.
How A Single Meeting Can Ruin a Day
Graham argues that even a single “manager” interruption can ruin a maker’s entire day.
In general, we know that even in manager mode or “task” mode, it can take 20 minutes to recover from a single 2-minute interruption.
But interrupting “maker mode” is even more disruptive. Recovering from an interruption in the creative process can take you out of the flow. You don’t just lose focus; you lose your entire momentum.
Planned interruptions, like scheduled meetings, are no different.
As Graham notes,
For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting … doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
He points out that there’s a cascading effect. If a maker has a meeting that breaks up the afternoon, it’s not just the afternoon that’s lost — it’s also the time before the meeting.
He admits that he’s less likely to start an ambitious project in the morning knowing that his afternoon will be interrupted.
Flow is killed off before it starts.
Establishing the Structures That Best Support Your Work
Many people are unaware of these two modes of working, and the impact that the manager’s schedule has on a maker.
It’s important to recognize that the cost of interruption is not the same for everyone.
People who work on “manager” schedules often assume that all time is equal, because for them, it largely is.
But for makers, time is not equal. A meeting costs more.
The cost of this misalignment isn’t just lost productivity; it’s burnout.
When you are forced to work against your natural rhythm, you don’t just lose time or creative flow — you lose yourself.
Recognizing your natural working rhythm is a crucial prerequisite to establishing structures that best support your work.
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