Makers need half days and managers need hours
💎CORE ARGUMENT
Some work comes in hours and some comes in half days, and a calendar that treats them alike will destroy the second kind without anyone noticing.
Managing is made of hours. A one-to-one, a decision, an unblocking: each fits a slot, and a day of eight of them is a good day. Making is different. A spec, a newsletter draft or an analysis needs the problem loaded into my head first, and loading takes most of an hour. A meeting at 10:30 does not cost thirty minutes of a making morning. It costs the morning, because nothing worth starting fits on either side of it.
The part I had to work out for myself is that I am both, on different days. Tuesday to Thursday at Quay House I am a manager of hours, and should be: that is when the team needs answers. Monday and Friday mornings at home I am a maker. The mistake of 2024 was mixing them, and then wondering why the roadmap document took three weeks.
So from 20 January those two mornings are blocked. They have held about seven times in ten. Each breach was a single meeting that looked harmless in the invitation.
This connects to 💎 The first hour of the day decides who owns the rest, which is the same idea at the scale of one hour, and to 💎 Working memory holds a handful of things so the list must hold the rest: the loading time exists because I can only hold a few things at once, and a meeting empties the hold.
Where I might be wrong. The seven-in-ten figure flatters me. I count a morning as held when there was no meeting, not when I made something. Some held mornings went to the inbox with the door shut.
It may also be that I need half days because I am slow to load, and that someone with better notes could make things in ninety minutes. If that is true, the fix is the note, not the calendar.
🧱BUILT FROM
🌍WHY IT MATTERS
I sort work by its unit before I schedule it. Hours go to office days, half days go to Monday and Friday. When someone asks for a slot on a protected morning I offer Tuesday first, and give way if they are blocked. An unblocked colleague is worth more than my paragraph.
☑️NEXT STEPS
- Block Monday and Friday mornings in the calendar
- Offer Tuesday first when asked for a protected slot
- At the quarterly review, count mornings that produced something, not mornings without meetings
Graham's essay gave me the two schedules and the observation that one meeting can sink an afternoon: 📖 Graham on maker and manager time. What I added is that one person can keep both, if the days are kept apart.
💎 The first hour of the day decides who owns the rest protects one hour for the same reason this protects four. 💎 Working memory holds a handful of things so the list must hold the rest explains what is being protected: a very small hold.
Making needs the problem loaded into working memory, which takes most of an hour and is lost at the first interruption. Managing needs no loading. So the same thirty-minute meeting is cheap on a manager's day and costs a half day on a maker's.
💎 Local efficiency can lower the output of the whole is the uncomfortable neighbour. My protected morning is a local efficiency. If Sam or an engineer waits until noon for an answer only I can give, I have made my own output look good by lengthening somebody else's queue.
The rule itself is 📜 No meetings on Monday and Friday mornings. The taught version, without my opinions, is 🧩 Maker and manager time.