By Stephan Schulze
In his classic post Maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham describes these distinct approaches:
“There are two types of schedule […] The manager’s schedule is for bosses […] 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”.
As CTO, my day is fragmented into meetings with my team or peers in Project A’s portfolio companies and dotted with administrative tasks. But as a maker — developer, designer, writer, take your pick— your job is profoundly different, and so is your calendar.
That’s why my calendar looks like a neatly-organized box of Legos, while my team’s calendars are calm stretches of focus time.
This is the only way they can be creative and do their job.
What does your calendar look like? Let me know!