The maker's schedule is for those who create. Whether it is programs, prose, or polynomials, makers need uninterrupted time to imagine, build, and deliver.
The manager's schedule, on the other hand, is for those who lead, facilitate, and measure. Their most valuable tool is the meeting. Whether via status meetings, sales meetings, planning meetings, or board meetings, managers must hold meetings to be effective. In his essay, Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule, Paul Graham describes these two conflicting schedule paradigms.
Graham points out that meetings are rarely for the maker's benefit. Meetings are organized by managers for the benefit of managers. According to Graham, they are often outright disruptive to makers. A seemingly harmless half-hour meeting scheduled in the middle of the afternoon can derail a maker for hours.
In his essay, Graham describes himself as being on the maker's schedule. But based on his description, it is more likely he is on the hackerpreneur's schedule. Hackerpreneurs, like Graham, intersperse making with managing, managing with making. The hackerpreneur has a company to build and software to build. The two schedules compete for the hackerpreneur's time.
The hackerpreneur's schedule is for the person who refactors code in the morning and grabs coffee with clients in the afternoon; who takes pleasure in designing class hierarchies and organizational hierarchies; who calls Object.new one moment and calls prospects the next.
Understanding and managing these competing scheduling needs has been a challenge for me, also, since founding Obtiva in 2005. During our first eighteen months, I coded on projects 40-45 hours a week. I was on the maker's schedule. Then, we began to bring in new and more challenging clients‚ and the people and complexity required to service them. My manager's responsibilities began to outweigh my maker's.
For the next two years, I did little coding. The only pitiable device I thought up was to black out a few days or weeks a year to devote uninterrupted time to coding. But, as you can imagine that was a bit disruptive to Obtiva. The business demanded that someone manage it.
Graham doesn't offer suggestions on how to manage the hackerpreneur's schedule, saying only, "Those of us on the maker's schedule are willing to compromise." (Remember, he is not yet aware that he is on the hackerpreneur's schedule.)
This year, the solution to this common scheduling dilemma revealed itself to me very simply. This year I took on a new project, Eventwax.com, that has yanked me back into the world of making. EventWax is an online event registration application and also a bootstrapped start-up.
Our coding practices at Obtiva (and Eventwax) include pair-programming. In order to ensure I have time available to code with my developer pairs, who tend not to be available at midnight, I schedule blocks of coding time throughout the week and label them "EventWax Pairing" in Google calendar. These are best scheduled in half-day increments. Some days consist of two back-to-back half-day coding blocks, but most often I can only pull myself away from my manager's duties for a half-day of coding at a time. But, just as I don't let myself get pulled out of a scheduled client meeting, I don't let myself get pulled out of scheduled coding time.
Though the amount of time the hackerpreneur devotes to making vs. managing will evolve—or swing wildly—over time, the solution is clear. Schedule time for making. Block it out in your calendar. Set its priority as high as any of your other commitments.
