Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

Paul Graham describes two ways of using a day. "The manager's schedule is for bosses": each day is cut into one-hour intervals, and a meeting is just one more slot. Makers, people who program or write, generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least, because hard work needs a long run before it gets going. For them, "A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in." Neither schedule is wrong: "Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet." The person booking the meeting usually sees only the hour it fills on their own calendar, so the cost to the maker tends to go uncounted. Google's code review guide draws the same line for reviewers: "If you are in the middle of a focused task, such as writing code, don’t interrupt yourself to do a code review."

Pinterest's product engineering organization experimented with a three-day no-meeting schedule, putting 9AM-5PM no-meeting blocks on engineers' calendars from Tuesday to Thursday. After about 100 days, managers reported very positive feedback, and a survey indicated that most engineers shared it; some said Monday and Friday meetings often spilled over. Several other engineering organisations at Pinterest then adopted the same schedule.

Stop for the Line: Toyota lets any operator stop the line so a problem is dealt with where it appears instead of piling up downstream; a team that guards every maker's block the same way can leave a blocked teammate, or a defect, waiting behind it.