Manager vs. Maker

his week's installment covers a different kind of tool. Not an accelerometer, scanner, or piece of software, but a powerful way of designing your workday to maximize efficacy and minimize frustration.

Bottom line, us recons need large chunks of uninterrupted time to effectively analyze a crash. As such, it's important to avoid sprinkling calls and meetings all over the calendar. Silicon Valley visionary, Paul Graham, wrote this phenomenal article discussing the issue.

I parsed out the most important bits to create the bite-sized version below, and changed programmer to recon.

“One reason [recons] dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.
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There are two types of schedule[s], which I’ll call 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.
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But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like [recons]. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t [reconstruct a crash] in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.
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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.
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For someone on the maker’s schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn’t merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work. I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon.
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Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet.”

I first read the article in 2020 and immediately asked Sam to design my schedule accordingly. It's been a game changer. I often need to be in manager mode, but I try to spend as much time in maker mode as possible.

If these sentiments resonate with you, I highly recommend reading the entire article and giving it a try. If you’d like to continue down the rabbit hole, Cal Newport’s Deep Work is an eye-opening read in the same vein.

Thanks for reading, keep exploring!

Lou Peck

P.S. I’m heading to the East Coast for a couple weeks to spend time with family, I’ll be back up in your inbox on July 18th!