Why your meeting request just ruined my day

A coworker passed along a link to an article, Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, yesterday and while I’ve already tweeted it, I thought it was good enough to commit to the longer-term archives. Essentially the author identifies two ways of approaching the schedule of a working day, which he calls the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule.

The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s 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.

In contrast, makers:

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.

I am a maker and couldn’t agree more with this generalization. When I have an hour between meetings, I usually end up doing administrative work that is of no productive value – that is certainly not enough time to get engaged on project work and really produce. The author writes working “from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt me.” I like getting to the office several hours before “normal office hours” for similar reasons. No interruptions=more productive work.

The author suggests some tricks for makers to use in balancing meeting requests and their preferred work schedule, ultimately concluding that:

Those of us on the maker’s schedule are willing to compromise. We know we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from those on the manager’s schedule is that they understand the cost.

Are you a maker or a manager?