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Growing Up: how managers destroy creativity & omega-3
"...the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day."
– Charles Dickens (in a letter to Maria Winter, 1855)
Me and you both Charles.
Hey guys,
I've been thinking about an article a lot lately and thought I'd share it here. It was originally sent to me by a reader of this newsletter (thanks B.C.). He is a tech startup founder, and I went to him for advice having become worried about a different founder I was working with. This founder expressed how totally overwhelmed he was by the amount of meetings and requests jamming up his calendar. It left little space to do his core work, i.e. building the actual product. He ended up doing something similar to what Paul Graham describes below, plus working all weekend, every weekend to get enough "making" time in. This had become out of control and he hadn't had any real time off in over a year.
I passed this article onto the founder and he replied "That's the most meaningful thing I've read all year, so accurate."
Hopefully you guys find it meaningful as well (whether you're the a founder of a startup / the next Charles Dickens or not...).
AND if you don't relate to this at all because you are FULL manager mode even in your social life then hopefully it helps you better understand your colleagues / clients / friends / family members who need to not make plans some of the time because the consciousness of the upcoming plan can RuiN thE ENtIRE DAy...
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule by Paul Graham (2009)
(Paul is a programmer, writer, and investor and the cofounder of startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator.)
Full article here. Below is the gist of it (boldface added by me):
There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.
When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.
Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work.
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you're a maker, think of your own case. Don't your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule, they're in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.
....
When you're operating on the manager's schedule you can do something you'd never want to do on the maker's: you can have speculative meetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another. If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it will turn out you can help one another in some way.
Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to "grab coffee," for example.
Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them.
Till recently we weren't clear in our own minds about the source of the problem. 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.
Accountability Club
I'm heading back to London in a couple of days and I am determined to stay on top of my mental health once I'm there. And then for everyday forever. But no pressure, let's start small. I am going to commit to one new habit each week for the next 6 weeks, and see how I go.
To begin with I'll look at implementing the behavioural changes suggested in a Calm (meditation app) masterclass I stumbled upon called "Rethinking Depression". It's by psychologist and clinical neuroscientist, Dr. Stephen Ilardi.
The first one I've already implemented - taking omega-3 everyday. I've always been a bit sceptical about taking supplements. I.e. do they actually do anything? But this argument seemed to make sense: supposedly humans used to consume roughly equivalent amounts of omega-6 and omega-3. However if you eat a pretty rubbish (i.e. processed) diet like I do you might be consuming up to 15 times more omega-6 than omega-3. Taking omega-3 therefore helps restore this balance. The balance is thought to be important for mood. Of course you could restore the balance naturally by cutting out processed food and eating tonnes of fish but apparently it takes a while for the omega-6 to leave your system, so the supplements are a good medium term fix and the diet can be something to work towards longer term. If you can't tell I have very little interest in biological processes so feel free to correct me if I've missed something. Or explain why I should start taking something like Athletic Greens. Could easily be convinced. Anyway, even as a placebo, taking a massive fish oil tablet every day (and yes I made sure it is natural triglycerides with 1000mg of EPA) is a morning reminder of hey, we are taking your mental health seriously.
week 1: omega-3
days complete: 7/7
This weeks habit: SUNLIGHT (I'll tell you why it's important next week, when I'll also report back on how many days I do it). And yes I told you guys back here (Growing Up: ADHD & man's search for meaning) that I was doing this everyday. I may have fallen off at some point, so just making sure I reimplement it when I get back :).
Specifically: view direct sunlight (not through glass) for 10 minutes every morning after waking (or once the sun comes up... sunrise 7:45am in London this week)
If you are trying to introduce new habits into your life feel free to play along! If it helps you can reply with your result each week... I feel like we all constantly talk about new habits or lifestyle changes we want to implement (especially towards the start of a new year), but without tracking them or keeping ourselves accountable in some way it can be difficult!
This week on the Growing Up with Delia Burgess podcast:
Ep. 36 - Lance Picioane: AFL, substance abuse and feeling suicidal
Lance Picioane is a former first round draft pick and AFL footballer who established mental health foundation Love Me Love You in 2013 to empower the community to take control of their mental wellbeing and to live happier, more fulfilling lives.
Lance shares his story of playing AFL whilst not coping mentally and how he used partying, drugs and alcohol to escape feelings of low self worth. He shares lots of helpful advice for anyone who might be dealing with similar difficulties.
My key takeaways:
- Not being a victim: the importance of taking control of my own recovery journey in seeking the help I need
- How loved ones can support each other by listening, rather than by trying to problem solve or "fix" the person
- How asking myself "Am I being the person I want to be right now?" might help getting me out of a low place
Ep. 37 - Ron Shell: adventures of a risk taker
Ron Shell was most recently Senior Vice President at PointsBet having joined the company in its infancy.
Lessons:
- How an early run in with authority can be a defining moment in your life (for the better)
- How if you always want to be no. 1, but you end up in a job where you don't really care then you'll probably be much happier doing something else
- A lesson from Ron's immigrant parents: use your network. It's important to work hard, but when you're new to a country a network is something you have to build from scratch. If you're not an immigrant you might be taking your network for granted...
Hope you've all had a solid first month of 2023.
xx Delia
P.S. Thanks for continuing to share this newsletter and the podcast :) I love hearing from you guys, feedback always welcome.
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Hi! I'm Delia Burgess
Do you want to be more interesting AND attractive? That's exactly what will happen if you type your email address below.
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