Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

Being an engineer and a tech lead, meetings are always a necessary evil. I intend to minimize them, some can be a slack message, others an email. But for some cases a meeting is required. It's hard to plan, difficult to get the right engagement. Then i read this article: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html it opened my eyes.

In short, Maker's (engineers, programmers, writers, etc) need their time and attention to solve a problem, usually they divide the work in blocks of half a day. Manager's on on a more coordination schedule and switch topics multiple times a day, their schedule is cut in blocks of an hour.

While a meeting at 11:00 is just an hour for a manager, it disrupts a whole morning for the maker.

"Solving" might by possible by combining the necessary team meetings in 1 block. Or lunch meetings, although in the covid/WFH times this won't work. But every company and team is difficult and maybe has other needs.

• Minimise meetings
• Have clear agenda with topics to discuss
• Don't over invite
• Start on time
• 20 minutes meetings are possible also.