(Paul Graham)
vo: Maker's Schedule, Schedule Manager's
July 2009
One reason is that programmers do not like meetings, that they are on another type of schedule than others. The meetings are costing them more.
There are two types of schedules, I'll call time-use framework and timetable of the creator. The schedule of the framework is for the bosses. It is embodied in the traditional calendar of appointments, each day being divided into one hour intervals. You can block several hours for a single task if they are needed, but by default, activity is changed every hour.
When using the time this way, meeting someone is a practical question. You can find a slot in his schedule, we reserve an appointment, and you're done.
most powerful people are on the schedule of the frame. It's time use of power. But there is another way of using time, common among people who make things, such as programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use their time in units of half a day at least. You can not write or programming in units of one hour. It barely enough to get under way.
When working on the designer's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can destroy an entire afternoon, cutting it in two ranges too small to move something difficult. And besides, we should think about going to the meeting. This is not a problem for someone who works on the timetable of the frame. There is always something coming in the next hour, the only question is what. But when someone who works on the timetable of the creator has a meeting, they should think.
For someone on the timetable of the creator, have a meeting, as an exception report. It's not just one switch to another task, it changes the way in which we work.
I realized that a meeting can sometimes affect an entire day. It is common that at least half a day to be destroyed by a meeting which cuts a morning or afternoon. But this is sometimes added a domino effect. If I know that the afternoon will be cut, I'm a little less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know I can seem hypersensitive, but if you are a designer, think about your own case. Is there did not mind quicken at the thought of a day entirely free to work without any appointment? Well, it means that we have in mind particularly depressed when it's not the case. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of our abilities. A small decline in morale is sufficient to kill them.
Each type of schedule works very well in himself. Problems arise when the two meet. Because most powerful people are working on the timetable of the frame, they are able to put everyone at their own pace if they wish. But the most intelligent control themselves, they know that some people working for them need time in long beach.
Our case [to Y Combinator, the venture capital firm in which the author is a partner] is unusual. Almost all investors, including venture capitalists all I know, work on the timetable of the frame. But Y Combinator works on the timetable of the creator. Gtr, Trevor and I do it because we have always done, and Jessica is mainly because it has put up with us.
I would not be surprised if he starts to have more companies like ours. It seems to me that the founders will be more able to resist their mutation frames, or at least delay it (just as, decades ago, they started to keep their work clothes instead of putting the tie).
How can we manage to advise many start-ups working on the timetable of the creator? Using the conventional device to simulate the schedule within the framework of the creator: office hours. Several times a week, I set aside a time range to meet the founders that we funded. These time slots are at the end of my workday, and I wrote a registration program so that all appointments are grouped in the end of a set of office hours. Because they arrived late in the day, these meetings are never interrupted. (If the workday does not end at the same time as mine, the meeting probably interrupts them, but they have made an appointment is that it must be profitable for them.) During busy periods, office hours at times become so long that they reduce the day, but they do not interrupt.
When we work in our own start-up in the 90s, I developed another trick to partition the day. I developed the dinner until about 3 am each day because at night, nobody could stop me. Then I slept until about 11 o'clock, and I had to work until dinner at what I called "business". I never thought in those terms, but in fact I had two days of work each day, one on employment time frame, and on that of the creator.
When running on time use of the framework, we can do something that is not done on the question of the creator: you can have meetings speculative. You can meet someone just to hang out. If you have an empty slot in his schedule, why not? Maybe we will realize we can help in something.
The businessmen of Silicon Valley (and the world for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. These are actually free if you are on the schedule of the frame. They are so frequent that there is express language to propose: that we will "take a little coffee," for example.
Meetings are speculative terribly expensive if you are on the schedule of the creator, though. This puts us a little in need of care. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we walk on a timetable framework. So we present to people we think we should meet, or we send emails offering to take us a little cafe. At this moment we have two possibilities, both bad: we can meet people, and lose a half day of work or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them.
Until recently, ourselves, had no clear idea about the source of the problem. We were resigned to having the choice between destroying our schedule and offend people. But now I understand what is happening, perhaps there is a third possibility: write something that explains the two types of schedule. Perhaps that term, if the conflict between the timetable of the frame and the timetable of the designer is becoming better understood, it will become less problematic.
We who are on the schedule of the creator, are willing to compromise. We know we must have a number of meetings. All we ask those who are on the schedule of the framework is to understand what it costs us.
Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris for reading drafts.
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