Maker's schedule, Manager's schedule (2009)

This meets with my experience. I rarely have meetings, and I regularly get solid, 4-hour blocks of productivity. Typically two to three time per week. Those pushes account for most of my work, and my best work. I do not schedule those 4 hour blocks because I would not be able to stick to the schedule. I often have trouble concentrating for even 30 minutes straight. When I hit 4 hours (and my time tracker sends me a notification to…

This also speaks to why Makers tend to be somewhat noctural: the default for night-time that it be uninterrupted. Not just interruptions by other people, but by our own notions of what we "should be doing", i.e. going to the post office when it's open, doing laundry, following the news, etc. Similarly, those people who have figured out that showing up to the office at 7am (or earlier) increses productivity are actually carving out Un-interrupted Time. I've found that early…

This is the problem with "Tech Lead" positions in many startups, i.e. ones where the team leader (managerial role) is expected to also shoulder many IC responsibilities (maker role). You end up either being a good team leader and a bad IC, a good IC and a bad team leader, or doing something unsustainable like being a good team leader from 9 AM - 5 PM and then filling in IC work until 9 PM. Please - just don't hire…

This is directly analogous to memory allocation[1]. Your day is the heap of all available memory. "Manager time" is a small allocation. Since the manager's heap only uses blocks this size, she can do this all day without any problems or fragmentation. "Maker time" is a large contiguous block. If the heap is empty, you can allocate them without any problem. But stick one manager-sized block in the middle and now you've split your heap such that the total time…