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The Maker’s Schedule & Reasons why it hasn’t reached ubiquity in UX teams
Paul Graham wrote the original article on the “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” in 2009. It is a classic article with ideas that many have heard of, some people follow, and even fewer people have actually read.
The core concept is that there are two broadly different types of schedules; the Maker’s and the Manager’s. A Manager’s schedule is characterized by a day partitioned into several back-to-back 30 and 60-minute meetings (see below). The Maker’s schedule is more intentional, dividing the day into a dedicated “making” portion (typically in the afternoon) and a block for everything else (like stand-ups, staff meetings, etc. in the morning).
Graham wrote with development teams in mind, but the ideas are equally applicable to UX teams. I’m sure many of you, whether you’re doing research, design, writing, or development, can relate to being able to do your best work when you’re able to set aside a block of a few hours vs. trying to find 30–60 minutes at a time for your craft.
Graham points out that problems occur when these schedules mix. Where someone in a Manager’s schedule mindset will be quick to throw a meeting on the diary, a meeting disrupts the Maker: “A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in.“
After introducing these two ways of working and giving a few anecdotes, Graham concludes that the article intends to spread a conscious awareness and hopes to see this deliberate approach to how we plan our time become widespread:
“We just took it for granted that we had to either blow our schedules or offend people. But now that I’ve realized what’s going on, perhaps there’s a third option: to write something explaining the two types of schedule. Maybe eventually, if the conflict between the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule starts to be more widely understood, it will become less of a problem.
Those of us on the maker’s schedule are willing to compromise. We know we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from those on the manager’s schedule is that they understand the cost.”
Anecdotally, I have worked on a product team that advocated for a Maker’s…
