Maker's schedule vs manager's schedule

Maker's schedule vs manager's schedule: meaning and definition

The maker's schedule is a day organised around long, unbroken stretches for building something. The manager's schedule is a day divided into short appointments, usually an hour each, where moving from one to the next is the work.

Picture a Tuesday with one hard job: the difficult section of a proposal. If your day runs on a maker's schedule, one meeting at 11 can cost you the whole morning, because what's left on each side is too short to do anything difficult. If it runs on a manager's schedule, one more meeting just means finding a free hour.

Paul Graham named the two in a 2009 essay, to explain why people on each schedule see the same meeting so differently. "Maker time" has come to mean the long stretches. Neither schedule is better, and the trouble usually starts where they meet.

Maker vs manager: the same Tuesday, two ways

The difference is the size of the unit. On the left, you have two long stretches to protect. On the right, each hour belongs to someone or something different.

When does each schedule work well?

• A maker's schedule suits work you have to load into your head first. Writing, code, design and difficult analysis often look like nothing for the first half hour, and then they start to click. A long block also leaves you free to roam: step away, walk, sketch on paper, and come back. Give the block one clear aim, so that roaming stays useful.
• A manager's schedule suits work made of people and quick decisions. For some jobs, moving between people and problems is the work itself, and a meeting is a normal way of getting it done.

Most people want some of each.

When maker and manager schedules collide

Trouble usually starts where the two meet. A manager books a call at 11 without seeing that it splits a maker's morning, and the maker feels the cost while the manager doesn't.

Much of the difficulty sits in the handover, which is closing one kind of work properly before you start the other. You also may not control your calendar, and a caring role can break up any day. In that case, short and ready-to-start pieces of work may serve you better than waiting for a half day that never comes.

An adaptation: the tightly packed task day

Graham's manager's day is made of appointments with other people. The same shape can be useful for solo work, even though it isn't what he described. Picture a Tuesday of small, clear jobs: approvals to give, two drafts to review, replies to send, a dentist to book and an insurance renewal. You can pack those into short slots and power through them.

To choose between a long block and short slots, ask what the work needs. If you have to load a lot into your head before anything happens, as with the proposal, it needs a long block. If each job is small and clear, a tightly packed day can suit it, as long as a few gaps give the day somewhere to go. If you have some of both, give the hard job the first long stretch, and gather the rest after it.

How to plan both kinds of day

You can do most of this with almost any calendar and notes app. The examples are shown in Xale, and each one ends with how to do the same thing in other apps.

Sort your work into maker and manager tasks

Try this before you plan the week, when everything is sitting in one long list.

1. Start a new Mindmap, and add everything you have to do. Press Tab to add a branch and Enter to add another beside it.
2. Make two main branches, one called "Maker" and one called "Manager".
3. Drag the big, hairy, difficult tasks under Maker.
4. Drag the smaller tasks that can be done in short pieces under Manager.
5. Right-click anything you're ready to start and choose Make task.

In other apps: MindMeister, XMind or Miro all work, and so do two columns on a sheet of paper.

Reflect on why the maker time matters

Try this before a long block, when you'd like to go in clear about why it's worth protecting.

1. Open a new Note, and give it a plain title, such as "This week's maker work".
2. Paste in your big, difficult maker tasks.
3. Write what happens when you achieve them. Who does it help, and what does it make possible?
4. Write what worries you about not starting them.
5. Read it back. Having the hidden roadblocks on a page may leave you better prepared. If one of them needs action, select the words and press Make task on the toolbar.

In other apps: use any page in Apple Notes, Evernote or OneNote, or a sheet of paper.

Plan a maker's day with long time blocks

Try this when one piece of work needs more of you than an hour can give.

1. Open Day, and drag the hard job from the tray to the start of your longest free stretch.
2. Drag the block's bottom edge until it fills the time. Use one or two large blocks and no more.
3. Name each block so that it says what done looks like, such as "Draft the proposal's hard section".
4. Drag Transition to just before the block and choose lead-in, to reread yesterday's notes. Drag another to just after it and choose wind-down, to note where you stopped.
5. Gather your short calls and small jobs at one end of the day, and leave the rest alone.

In other apps: block the time in Google Calendar or Outlook, and mark it as busy.

Plan a tightly packed day with short slots

Try this when the day is made of meetings and small jobs, and you want to get through them with nothing dropped.

1. Open Day. Your meetings are already there if you've subscribed a calendar.
2. Drag your tasks from the tray into the slots between them, keeping each one short. On a phone, tap + Plan on some free time, then Place.
3. Put similar small jobs side by side, so that the dentist and the insurance share one slot.
4. Leave a few gaps, in case something runs over.
5. When the plan shifts, move the blocks. Anything that doesn't happen just fades.

In other apps: Sunsama and Structured suit short slots, and so does a calendar's day view or a sheet of paper.

Start a long block by making a plan

Try this at the start of a long maker block, when the work is too big to hold as one task.

1. Start a new Project (Pro) for the big piece of maker work.
2. Add the specific tasks you can already see.
3. Make a habit for any long-term pattern it needs, like writing for an hour each morning, and link it to the project.
4. Use Link Projects on your mind maps and notes, so that your thinking stays with the work.
5. Stop there if that's all the block allows. Starting with a plan is a good result for a maker block.

Without Xale Pro, a single note can hold the plan, with a heading each for tasks, habits and links.

In other apps: use a project in Todoist or Asana, or a folder that holds your documents and notes together.

Use a focus screen on either kind of day

Try this once the plan is made, and the calendar itself has become a distraction.

1. Open Now when you begin. It shows the block you're in, the time left, what's up next and the rest of today.
2. On a maker's day, keep it on your main screen, with a Note or Mindmap open beside it for the work itself. You're free to roam inside the block, and Now keeps its aim in view.
3. On a day of short slots, use it to see only the current item and the next one.
4. Press Mark done and move on, so you can stop holding the rest in your head.
5. If something new comes to mind, press Add task and go back.

In other apps: use a full-screen timer and a sticky note with one aim on it.

How to balance maker and manager days

• Decide what kind of day it is before it starts. A quick look the evening before can stop you expecting deep work from a day of calls.
• Start with one protected block a week. Show what it produces, and use that to ask for more.
• Bunch what you can't avoid. Meetings at 1:00, 2:30 and 4:00 leave you more than meetings at 10:00, 1:00 and 4:00. If a day is going to be busy anyway, let it be busier and save another one.
• Make it an agreement. A block is easier to keep when your team knows about it, and knows how to reach you if they have to.
• Leave good notes for yourself. A line on where you stopped means a short stretch can still count.

Prompts to try with an AI assistant

Paste these into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, and fill in the brackets.

See which kind of day you're living in

Here's my calendar for the last week: [paste it]. Here's what I was hoping to get done: [list]. Sort each day as mostly maker, mostly manager or mixed, where maker means long unbroken blocks and manager means many short pre-decided slots. Then tell me which days didn't match the work I wanted to do.

Design a week around what can't move

My job is [role]. These things can't move: [school run, standing meetings, caring duties]. I'd like about [hours] a week for [work needing focus]. Draft two realistic weeks: one that protects the longest blocks possible, and one that assumes I'll be interrupted.

Ask for focus time at work

I want to ask [manager or team] for [one protected block a week]. They care about [what they care about]. Help me write a short, friendly request that proposes a four-week trial and says how people can still reach me.

Maker vs manager schedule: common questions

Who came up with the maker's schedule and the manager's schedule? Paul Graham, the Y Combinator cofounder, in his 2009 essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule".

What is maker time? Long, uninterrupted time set aside for work that needs a lot of thought. Many people protect it by blocking it on their calendar.

Can I be both a maker and a manager? Yes, and most people are. You can split by day or by part of the day. Try it for a week, and notice which split leaves you able to do the work you care about.

How long does a maker block have to be? Graham's own view was about half a day. Lots of useful work fits in less, so start with the longest stretch you can realistically protect.

What's the difference between this and time blocking? Time blocking means giving work a slot on your calendar. Maker and manager describe the size of those slots. You can time block either kind of day.

How is maker time different from deep work? Deep work describes the kind of concentration. Maker time describes the calendar that makes room for it.

Related topics

• Compare with Time blocking: it gives work a slot on your calendar, and this page is about the size of those slots.
• Compare with Deep work: the kind of concentration that maker time makes room for.
• Protect long stretches with Defensive calendaring.
• Ease the handovers with Buffer time.
• See the cost of moving between tasks in Context switching.
• Decide what kind of day it is with Daily planning.