Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule by Paul Graham

A classic essay on the difference between how makers and managers schedule and focus on work.

The main point is that makers need long, interrupted sessions of deep work to stay focused and create valuable work. Interruptions cause long context switches that empties the context in the working memory and requires a fresh cold start.

Types of schedules

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’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. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

Problems with intersection of schedules

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.

This is why when I work as in developer relations (on a manager’s schedule), I try to give the power to the developer, be early enough to suggest things so people can fit my meetings with their flow and deep work.