“…the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day.”
– Charles Dickens
I was recently talking to my colleague, a software engineer. He said that he was at pains to explain how disruptive meetings are to a coder. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I understood the challenge. Why would one meeting be so disruptive if the rest of the day was open? The only way I could relate to it was that I often found it easier to batch my meetings together. This way, I could finish them all at once. But that wasn’t the same as wanting meetings gone away all together
Then I cam across a wonderful article that changed the way I think about meetings. Paul Graham essentially argues that they are two types of schedules – the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. In general, we all just follow the latter, traditional schedule and plan our work in 1 hour slots. If a meeting is slapped right in between manager’s day at 11h00, it makes no difference. The manager has planned our previous hours with dedicated work slotted perfectly in 1 hour blocks.
But here is the catch. When you are doing creative work, like “maker’s”, you would find a meeting slapped at 11h00 disruptive. It would ruin the entire afternoon, maybe even the whole day. The maker has to put in additional effort for the meeting too. There is the mindset shift required before the meeting. Then, there is the listening in after the meeting. And of course, all the action items follow after that. The task switching, essentially, has multiple costs.
The challenge, of course, is when the two schedule meet each other and then there is a full collision. The manager’s gets thing done with meetings while the maker’s get things done outside of meetings. I, for example, find myself doing both tasks at once. Some of my work requires creativity and blocks with no disruption. While some of it requires meetings where I can align with my team, coach a team member or sprint tasks.
And so, the tension remains – how do we create a world where both schedules coexist harmoniously? Maybe the answer isn’t in trying to eliminate meetings but in designing them with more care. Can we be more intentional with our time and the time of those around us? Perhaps it’s not about choosing a manager’s schedule or a maker’s schedule but rather blending the two thoughtfully. In the end, the most creative work might happen when we respect both the need for uninterrupted focus and the necessity of collaboration
Aliasgher Janmohammed 