Eight years ago Paul Graham wrote an article characterizing two different types of time management, each centering on either a maker or manager perspective. The maker schedule is that of the individual who needs longer stretches of time in order to create, whereas the manager schedule is structured around meetings and shorter periods of work times. But times, they are a-changing...and fast!  In this cast, the ProductivityCast team looks at potentially new additions to the maker and manager schedules (ergo, the maker, manager and the artist's productivity...and individual, too!), and how to attempt to master time management in a changing world.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

SkedPal

“Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” by Paul Graham

Maker vs Manager’s Schedules

Brainswarming

Google Calendar

Principle of Universalizability

The Platinum Rule by Dr. Tony Alessandra

The Platinum Rule - Sample Report

Keirsey Temperament Sorter

16 Personalities

Holacracy

McKinsey article: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/making-time-management-the-organizations-priority

Meetingless Meetings by Francis Wade

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Agile project management

RescueTime

Top Brain, Bottom Brain: Surprising Insights into How You Think by Stephen Kosslyn and G. Wayne Miller

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast's audio).

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Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life then you've come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things product to Vittie here your host Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks Welcome everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity we're back we're going to be talking about something really interesting to find is the maker versus manager schedules and this is a an article that was written by Paul Graham sort of an idea developed by Paul Graham back in the system when when was this article written two thousand and nine o'clock in America it's been this very older piece of work but it has it set the stage for a concept and personal productivity that I think is really important to us all I'm curious about everyone's thoughts here as we make our way through this conversation and so do you want to start off with explaining what the maker schedule is versus the manager schedule and what Paul Graham was really talking about yes the article hardens the good there is two kinds of Scots who when he goes by your schedule research for this in all twenty minutes half an hour's Ketzel were do jump from one task to the other and can really make your essential into smaller pieces if you go even today to more mother reason articles about it you will find people Musk who said he's got his schedule in five minutes increment money then not even twenty minutes one amongst a lot of people used to work then you have what he calls the maker is going to him to sketch Oh poor people on projects who require a different timetable so if you think about coding for example rather than a piece of software or a program no webpage or. Writing a book or even or in an article are things that as much as we all wish they can happen in ten minutes increments usually doesn't usually require a longer chunk of time usually require that you don't get those interruption if there is a lot of things as a maker that interruptions are extremely costly because it's not the five minute interruption is it time that will take you to get back into the place where so you continue moving forward and that was the promise from the article those two things are reality and that some people have one on the other. As we say the article was written on to cross a line and to be honest with me when they are ignored reader this kid might I read it and say Oh Uncle Cornie dressed in that ago and about time my life was really heavily into been interleaved into a man of your stature and even that I had to make clear one I did not acknowledge their important type of work I was doing Ari access to those massive chunk of time I was travelling over two hundred mph thousand miles a year so I could have those chunks of time or airplanes on a star when my wall truncation the airplane or stop being a reality what happened was I found myself to struggle heavily with it to a statute and even took me a long time to track back the article because obviously I remember P.C.'s another Stargate all content to be able to find it but Syrians is something I've been keeping on the back of my mind and it's a concept that has been kroner me especially in the last years on important because what I have found is we've the technology and evolution of technology used to be or some people live on money years consumption. People leave on major instructions what I have found is this is a problem that most people is dealing with to them they are both Dylan with two elements inside of their productivity that are clashing with each other and in many cases employers just look in a distant and say I don't understand why my system works so great for oldest frames and fail miserably on all these other plans and some of the cast is not the system of the person is and you are trying to solve problems from a perspective of who. You are trying to use a pillar screwdriver to nail something on the wall well can you do it Jerry Penacoli eventually will work but the reality is you're not using the muscle practice too so I want to bring Francis into the conversation here because Francis you are the king of time management in terms of scheduling things on. You and you're an advisor to the Scott pal team if I'm not mistaken and so so so as an advisor to the Sky team where their promise is that you schedule everything into your calendar and correct me if I'm wrong there Wow does this concept make sense to you how does it not make sense to you in terms of the maker schedule maker manager schedule concept and do you agree with the guest of that it has melded over the last almost decade big big question yeah. Let me just correct one thing you said which is that by the way you have two minutes. And the correct one thing quickly which is that step pal is about scheduling everything it's not about scheduling everything at the same time so there is a there's a there features in it which allow you to store items that you don't want to schedule right away and I times of course that you want to schedule right away so it is an active kind on there and sort of an inactive list of tasks is not quite that we set. But having said that the concept of using your schedule in the skillful way that store described I think is becoming a huge problem for everyone I think it's a problem for me personally because I have always sort of bones between the two worlds of Maker and manager and I remember our coach telling me early on they needed to be in research somewhere and I said no not like I like being in business and I like being a consultant I like the cut and thrust of topic lots of people but whenever I go too far in one direction I find myself wondering back in the other I feel almost schizo phrenic in a way between the two having to choose between the manager and the maker I feel like I have to have some kind of balance and when I go to find one direction I have a problem so skeptical been a great solution because it gives you the freedom to vote the kind of schedule that allows you to live in both worlds where you can of course block out big point big periods of time like you can in any calendar but it allows you to manage all those flexible tasks which don't have a particular time slot so it in a way you might say optimizes your manager schedule while it allows you to block time for YOUR make a schedule so I like I like that feature of it use it in the end result is that your free to focus on whatever you're doing at that point in time without having to have your mind wander into my spending enough time making or to wander into a man managing all the tasks which I need to manage as a manager so it's a great question and I want to add in something that I also read about managers trying to be makers or failing to make a following of a ghost I just said it's a great article I came from McKinsey they interviewed a bunch of executives and I asked them. It was what you guys implementing your strategic plans properly and what they discovered is that executives you know being on the go and being busy all the time they don't sit down after a future planning retreat to work on their strategy they don't devote the Make a kind of time that you need to be creative to implement the new ideas so what they came up with or my interpretation to them what they came up with is administrative assistant who Books them all at the same time to be in a meeting which never meets so in an article I call it the meeting less meeting because it's a little bit like saying OK we're all going to work on strategy between say ten and twelve on Tuesday morning but we're going to book everyone's calendar as if it were a meeting however it's a meeting in that nobody actually shows up to in person