Many years ago, I stumbled onto Paul Graham’s book Hackers and Painters. It is a series of essays regarding software development, startup life, and spam filters. Reading that book led me to Paul’s other writings and, more specifically, his blog. One of the posts that I remember clearly and think about often is titled Makers’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.

In this essay, Paul contrasts the high-level schedules that power many makers (programmers) and managers. Makers tend to find their maximum productivity within long spans of uninterrupted time (often four hours or more). Writing software frequently requires sustained focus and the ability to juggle multiple complex ideas at the same time (this classic comic summarizes things quite well). Managers, on the other hand, tend to have days that revolve around communication and coordination. These exchanges often take the form of many short meetings speckled throughout the day.

This is, of course, a generalization of two types of people: the real world isn’t this simple and not everyone fits into such narrow buckets. I also want to stress that both of these schedules are important but they serve different purposes. Creation and coordination are different beasts with unique requirements. The environments necessary for some makers and managers to succeed are simply not the same. Problems arise, however, when either group is forced to conform to the other’s schedule.

Mario Kart? Link to heading

I identify quite strongly with the “maker” persona outlined in Paul’s essay. I can create awesome projects, solve difficult problems, and write meaningful blog posts… when I have the time and freedom from distractions. Distractions can take many forms: a meeting, a message on Slack, or even just a sudden, unexpected noise (Maple, our little corgi, thinks she’s a big scary guard dog sometimes). Many minutes’ worth of focus and context can be obliterated by a single interruption. It’s often why I find myself working late at night when most of the world is asleep: no meetings, Slack is quiet, and Maple is snoozing.

The other day, while letting my mind wander, I thought of an analogy: makers are sort of like the big, heavy characters in Mario Kart (like Bowser or Donkey Kong). They have a very high top speed but low acceleration. If left uncontested, they can stay ahead of their smaller, lighter counterparts and handily win the race. However, they are more severely penalized by those disruptive banana peels. While other characters can quickly climb back to cruising speed, the makers need more time to re-establish their flow. Consider this: if all banana peels, shells, and bombs were removed from the race, which characters would thrive?