This article by Paul Graham is so useful i just have to give a shout-out to it. “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” describes two types of time, and how the difference between them causes conflict. Maybe office hours are the solution to my problems?
I’m a fantastic manager—yet i yearn for maker time.
That first article relates to another by the same author from a few years earlier: “Good and Bad Procrastination.” He claims getting real work done requires blowing off errands and smaller work. Well, sure, i mean you can’t do everything at once, and it’s easy but unsatisfying to let the “urgent” crowd out the “important.” But is the absent-minded professor Graham puts on a pedestal really the best role model for accomplishing big, important things? This sounds like a patriarchal throwback, leaving me asking who is washing the professor’s dishes and raising the kids.
Graham says, “When I think of the people I know who’ve done great things, I don’t imagine them dutifully crossing items off to-do lists. I imagine them sneaking off to work on some new idea.” I both feel the truth of this and dispute it at the same time. Accomplishing huge and important things requires hanging in for the long haul, and a commitment to do whatever it takes to reach the goal shining in the distance. Whether Gandhi maintained to-do lists or not i don’t know, but he had a reputation for cleaning latrines at the ashram. In the projects i care most about, i field the balls no one else is catching, along with whatever else i am focusing on. Yet, if i do too much housecleaning and not enough of the fun stuff, i become crotchety and burned out.
Thus the question, as usual, is how to find balance.
timescout 