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Eight years ago Paul Graham wrote an article characterizing two different types of time management, each centering on either a maker or manager perspective. The maker schedule is that of the individual who needs longer stretches of time in order to create, whereas the manager schedule is structured around meetings and shorter periods of work times. But times, they are a-changing…and fast! In this cast, the ProductivityCast team looks at potentially new additions to the maker and manager schedules (ergo, the maker, manager and the artist’s productivity…and individual, too!), and how to attempt to master time management in a changing world.
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In this Cast
Show Notes
Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
“Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” by Paul Graham
Principle of Universalizability
The Platinum Rule by Dr. Tony Alessandra
The Platinum Rule – Sample Report
McKinsey article: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/making-time-management-the-organizations-priority
Meetingless Meetings by Francis Wade
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Top Brain, Bottom Brain: Surprising Insights into How You Think by Stephen Kosslyn and G. Wayne Miller
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast’s audio).
Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life then you’ve come to the right place productivity cast the weekly show about all things product to Vittie here your host Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks Welcome everybody to ProductivityCast the weekly show about all things personal productivity we’re back we’re going to be talking about something really interesting to find is the maker versus manager schedules and this is a an article that was written by Paul Graham sort of an idea developed by Paul Graham back in the system when when was this article written two thousand and nine o’clock in America it’s been this very older piece of work but it has it set the stage for a concept and personal productivity that I think is really important to us all I’m curious about everyone’s thoughts here as we make our way through this conversation and so do you want to start off with explaining what the maker schedule is versus the manager schedule and what Paul Graham was really talking about yes the article hardens the good there is two kinds of Scots who when he goes by your schedule research for this in all twenty minutes half an hour’s Ketzel were do jump from one task to the other and can really make your essential into smaller pieces if you go even today to more mother reason articles about it you will find people Musk who said he’s got his schedule in five minutes increment money then not even twenty minutes one amongst a lot of people used to work then you have what he calls the maker is going to him to sketch Oh poor people on projects who require a different timetable so if you think about coding for example rather than a piece of software or a program no webpage or. Writing a book or even or in an article are things that as much as we all wish they can happen in ten minutes increments usually doesn’t usually require a longer chunk of time usually require that you don’t get those interruption if there is a lot of things as a maker that interruptions are extremely costly because it’s not the five minute interruption is it time that will take you to get back into the place where so you continue moving forward and that was the promise from the article those two things are reality and that some people have one on the other. As we say the article was written on to cross a line and to be honest with me when they are ignored reader this kid might I read it and say Oh Uncle Cornie dressed in that ago and about time my life was really heavily into been interleaved into a man of your stature and even that I had to make clear one I did not acknowledge their important type of work I was doing Ari access to those massive chunk of time I was travelling over two hundred mph thousand miles a year so I could have those chunks of time or airplanes on a star when my wall truncation the airplane or stop being a reality what happened was I found myself to struggle heavily with it to a statute and even took me a long time to track back the article because obviously I remember P.C.’s another Stargate all content to be able to find it but Syrians is something I’ve been keeping on the back of my mind and it’s a concept that has been kroner me especially in the last years on important because what I have found is we’ve the technology and evolution of technology used to be or some people live on money years consumption. People leave on major instructions what I have found is this is a problem that most people is dealing with to them they are both Dylan with two elements inside of their productivity that are clashing with each other and in many cases employers just look in a distant and say I don’t understand why my system works so great for oldest frames and fail miserably on all these other plans and some of the cast is not the system of the person is and you are trying to solve problems from a perspective of who. You are trying to use a pillar screwdriver to nail something on the wall well can you do it Jerry Penacoli eventually will work but the reality is you’re not using the muscle practice too so I want to bring Francis into the conversation here because Francis you are the king of time management in terms of scheduling things on. You and you’re an advisor to the Scott pal team if I’m not mistaken and so so so as an advisor to the Sky team where their promise is that you schedule everything into your calendar and correct me if I’m wrong there Wow does this concept make sense to you how does it not make sense to you in terms of the maker schedule maker manager schedule concept and do you agree with the guest of that it has melded over the last almost decade big big question yeah. Let me just correct one thing you said which is that by the way you have two minutes. And the correct one thing quickly which is that step pal is about scheduling everything it’s not about scheduling everything at the same time so there is a there’s a there features in it which allow you to store items that you don’t want to schedule right away and I times of course that you want to schedule right away so it is an active kind on there and sort of an inactive list of tasks is not quite that we set. But having said that the concept of using your schedule in the skillful way that store described I think is becoming a huge problem for everyone I think it’s a problem for me personally because I have always sort of bones between the two worlds of Maker and manager and I remember our coach telling me early on they needed to be in research somewhere and I said no not like I like being in business and I like being a consultant I like the cut and thrust of topic lots of people but whenever I go too far in one direction I find myself wondering back in the other I feel almost schizo phrenic in a way between the two having to choose between the manager and the maker I feel like I have to have some kind of balance and when I go to find one direction I have a problem so skeptical been a great solution because it gives you the freedom to vote the kind of schedule that allows you to live in both worlds where you can of course block out big point big periods of time like you can in any calendar but it allows you to manage all those flexible tasks which don’t have a particular time slot so it in a way you might say optimizes your manager schedule while it allows you to block time for YOUR make a schedule so I like I like that feature of it use it in the end result is that your free to focus on whatever you’re doing at that point in time without having to have your mind wander into my spending enough time making or to wander into a man managing all the tasks which I need to manage as a manager so it’s a great question and I want to add in something that I also read about managers trying to be makers or failing to make a following of a ghost I just said it’s a great article I came from McKinsey they interviewed a bunch of executives and I asked them. It was what you guys implementing your strategic plans properly and what they discovered is that executives you know being on the go and being busy all the time they don’t sit down after a future planning retreat to work on their strategy they don’t devote the Make a kind of time that you need to be creative to implement the new ideas so what they came up with or my interpretation to them what they came up with is administrative assistant who Books them all at the same time to be in a meeting which never meets so in an article I call it the meeting less meeting because it’s a little bit like saying OK we’re all going to work on strategy between say ten and twelve on Tuesday morning but we’re going to book everyone’s calendar as if it were a meeting however it’s a meeting in that nobody actually shows up to in person so you stay in your office and you know we’re forcing you to adopt two hours of MC or a time inside over your manager schedule and we’re making sure that we we’re not meeting you’re not missing a meeting with any of us because all of us are going to be deployed to war or offices for the same two hour period so that we are all working on strategy it’s just that we’re working on it separately I thought that was such a brilliant brilliant way to get managers to operate like makers when that kind of behavior is required and that’s kind of a corollary to to a concept called brainstorming that was developed or at least I first saw published on H.B.R. on Harvard Business Review and I’ll link to it in the show notes but where the idea is that instead of brainstorming together in a meeting people actually have time outside of a meeting in order to brainstorm individually to overcome group think and other kinds of you know Rip dynamic issues that that hurt good ideas I like this idea of being able to schedule. You’ll make your time so that people have the Genesis time to make that happen so I want to I want to bring art into the conversation our Do you agree or disagree and what’s your for What’s Your flavor on all of this fighting with two aspects of it I keep going to this maker versus manager versus artist and I’ve added one to it versus individual because I’m trying to look at this from a more holistic perspective especially outside of a corporate space and into you know and individual business owner or somebody doing a start of somebody doing a sole proprietorship something like that how does that fit into this mix and where I run into two challenges with this is one I like the concepts of the compartmentalization because it does help qualify the types of work that somebody who’s running their own shop is going to have to do because at any time they will have to do all of these roles but including the individual into it you can now start to apply this across an entire day calendar rather than just your working day calendar but where I start to struggle with that is that when we start to compartmentalize these ideas we start to frame them in this on off type of mindset from eight to ten I am going to be working on my maker activity that’s assuming we get this mental image that it eight o’clock the switch is going to be flipped and I’m going to be in maker mode and that’s not the case it’s much more like trying to excel or read a car from a dead stop it takes time to come up to speed it takes time sitting at the charger when you look at that transition between these blocks you really have to start to plan and think about well how long does it take for me to accelerate I’m not a Tesla I’m much more like an old Pinto so it takes me longer to get. Up to speed but I can stop pretty quick at the far end because I never really got going all that fast to begin with we look at that transition and we start to look at these types of this type of scheduling we have to allow ourselves the opportunity to work within them and let me give you an example if I were thinking about my calendar the first thing I would have in the morning is individual time and that’s non-work related That’s the stuff that gets me up and moving in the morning and all the normal things that I need to do but then the next logical type of time for me is Manager time because that’s that time period and I’m not saying how long it is because it would be adaptable but it’s that time period allows me to get my hands around that day and figure out what’s going to go on sometimes it’s reactive sometimes it’s proactive It just depends on what’s going on on any given day but at that point I’m not going to stay in manager time for four hours out of the day because it’s not that type of time it’s not those types of activities you can only shuffle emails around for so long so at that point you’ve got to transition into something else either maker or artist or individual and I do see that there is a difference between maker an artist maker you’re putting things together you may be following process and procedure it’s that builder mindset artist is much more of a free association type of thing starting from open you know open window open table open collection of capabilities and then starting to assemble things together in ways that have no predefined process the two are very different they require very different types of thinking at least for me so when I go from manager to something else maybe I have to be in maker mode I’m going to do some writing that morning can I just make that jump from manager to maker No actually if I really analyze how I work I don’t. Make those transition blocks if I put those side by side in my Google calendar I’m actually lying to myself because that’s not really the case there’s a little block that goes in between the two that’s an individual block and that’s me getting getting up walking off and going in getting a cup of coffee and clearing my head a little bit before I sit down and start into the maker’s segment so when we look at this kind of schedule and I look back at the article and read over it and the first just as a high level read the first feeling I got from the article is that maker scheduling is better than manage your schedule and I think that’s misleading because I don’t believe at least in current day it may have been that case in two thousand and nine but in current day I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive I think there are parts of a larger scheduling process when I hear this idea of creating abstractions like maker manager artist or any other tools I always sort of step back to the idea of personality styles and type indicators and these always create a wide variety of challenges for me to think about I tend to fall on sort of the four temperaments of Dr David Keirsey concepts of the Keirsey temperament sorter and it’s very similar to myers briggs I think it’s probably based mildly on the concept of it and you know the four temperaments has artisans guardians idealists and rationals and and again these are these are abstractions of personalities that are not necessarily working modalities which is what we’re talking about and again I struggle with the with the idea that we should perhaps clump individual personalities together for purposes of working modalities So I I’m not sure if that necessarily helps the conversation or how her hurts the conversation with a number of different things well I don’t I don’t know that we’re necessarily clumping that well OK we back that up it. Easy to transition this into personalities and that I think is the first fatal flaw of it because the part that I’m also looking at here is that for these four that I just a den of five and all four apply I applied myself personally they’re not black and white applications I’m a much stronger manager than I am an artist I’ll admit that so when I look at those I have to do those two types of activities in those two roles but if I’m going to do the artist role if I’m going to execute those activities within my schedule I have to account for the fact that I’m not as strong there as I am in other ones so for example the ramp up time is longer the cooldown time is longer the peak of activity may not be as high as some of the others so I can’t the bell curve and it’s what I’m almost visualizing this mentally as bell curves of activity within these blocks I have to recognise that and this is a lot of navel gazing gazing in certain blocks I can peek that bell curve very quickly get a lot of product to video out of a short time period and move on to the next other ones not so much so when I look at my schedule and you can parallel this to things like getting things done looking for activities that match a type of time window that’s available if I know I can do manager stuff quickly and effectively and in a small time block that becomes something that I can fit into those open windows and I could see how this the more I’m kicking this around in my head I can see how this would be very useful for someone to try to get a hold of a highly dynamic schedule because it allows you to say OK I’m going to group these types of activities together but not necessarily saying I’m I’m a maker or I’m a manager I have to go back to that whole sole proprietor. Ships I think this is the hat you’re wearing at that given time in the in the one guy shot you get a whole hat rack of these so you have to decide which Hatch you’re going to wear and which Hatch you’re not going to wear on any given time and which ones look good on you and which ones don’t and if they don’t look good on you you’re going to have to plan for that but I don’t I don’t know that I would necessarily tie it to a psychological model you could I just think that almost models the effect of it I think there have been several people over time who have attempted to and that’s what I was kind of alluding to which is that I think I agree with you that it’s it tends to be a struggle to take these kinds of working modalities and mixing them with social style personality styles and otherwise I think the most recognizable work contemporary piece by Dr Tony L. Sondra I think is called the platinum rule in which he discusses these four working style social styles and the roles that you have in your work and how to actually make them match your social styles and in order to be successful at present again that that to me sort of harkens back to Amman you will contest and Conti and concepts of principle of universalize ability and we get into a very high level philosophical discussion over moral action but I won’t I won’t bore you all with that which is to say that I think I agree with you but I also see the value in being able to know how you operate and how to how to do what you’re talking about I think I usually use the analogy of like acceleration deceleration lanes on a highway you need those in order to be able to get up to speed so that you’re in at least some synchrony with the cars around you when you get onto a highway you know that if you have a short acceleration lane it’s going to be much more difficult to get into traffic than if you have a longer one and so what are those on ramps and off ramps those acceleration and deceleration lanes in your own world in order to be able to get you into that mode out. City that’s necessary for you to be able to be productive and I think once you figure those out then you are are much more likely to succeed you know and I were having a conversation last week and I was having trouble with how to really get into working on a particular task and the aha moment that was given to me by a goose Joe was this idea that I had to maybe do some rework I had to do more work in order to get into that mode refreshing my mind about the material it makes total sense right once you figure out overwrite I need that acceleration lane in order to be able to get more done and it’s going to take a little bit more time but that planning time and that execution time additional execution time actually is far more useful to me because that means I’ll actually get it done yes it’ll take a little bit more time but it will actually get done as opposed to not getting done at all and I and I that’s kind of where my mind is with it and I know it’s not it’s not particularly as cogent as I would like it to be but that’s that’s the blender the feeling I get about it you know I think you’re definitely on target with what intrigues me about this is that this is not from what I’m reading this is not something that you could say I’m going to implement this today this is truly a historical data exercise before you can actually try to put this in action you need to go through and look at the top these categories of activity and how do you do them measuring them evaluating the last major time you sat down and acted as a maker you know how long did you do it for how long did it feel like before you were into the flow of it how long did it take you to pack it up and put it away when you were done starting to gather that data to build this model so that you can then apply it to other things and I think that’s where this falls down is because unless you’re a hardcore. Tiffany cheek like we are not going to go through that level of effort there is an important thing to mentioning here there is something distinction between when we have the opportunity to have discussion and from the person guiding purpose or do or prefer Pearlie who is on the trenches who is overwhelmed by all these but he needs to work I do a lot of work with is sort of her newer and micro printers and one of the things that are interesting for me is how on aware sometimes they are of the different hats they need to work they have been able to identify some when you come to this concept of the manager the maker a lot of these celebrant or. Nurse Greenlee think that they or their mindset is more towards one or the other or they know how to manage the process of the business they are trying to create or trip or creating or they know how to do the work so they’re the mater and they really struggle with the other part on an affair agree with you that you know you need both and. You need to find a way to ballance both found more people who it’s not necessarily aware that they are both things and that the both things need to manage been a different way I am first I agree with you it’s not easy to say well we’re free will be great to be able to say well I’m going to be a mentor from eight to ten everybody and then my brain will ultimately could click into being a maker from eight to ten every morning that will be our nation actually that’s not how it happened and I agree with you sometimes in a much much much larger chunks than those two hours in order to make some of the fish happen you must use a good. Image in LA where you said you were Peter welcome or like a Google you know or some of those days. That occur to relive a lot more and I don’t know if I can a stop of one of our you know. But tension is really important because I think part of the frustration that sometimes comes with this product is the fact that people is trying to solve major problems on manageress cut shorts and they will never work because they. Have believed in the way of work of those market maker chip it is completely different than the ones that this model year when the mother here is really can move in a small increments while this made her need longer chunks you know when we were discussing really those meetings so far and everybody is going to have their meeting in their office and let’s be planning that flying except that what came to happen on those blocks of time usually not the planet because. You are so high level manager it’s hard for you to disconnect from that mindset and plug into the maker minds great I have now an hour to be more managerial instead of more strategic when I see or Normally when I work with this then I’m going full open doors for me to produce Michael Moore’s that’s one of the really strong they have or here in crew who is trying to teach it OK but then they fail in the action or they are exactly the opposite they are super managerial and then fail but they make you a part of it they can tell you just try to be in the plan to the team but then they don’t know how to get determined to carve the time to be able to put the action or you have the ones who are doing all the actions but now a bunch of little inventory or even actually even Tory because they don’t cannot put the managerial brain to work to be able to her. The strategy to move forward component because of months I think there used to be a lot more roles that were a clear mother you’re on a peer Maker more and more. People with both people clashing with both the complete cannot understand the problem was now there milks the moment mixed is not sorry dear for people to you have these people who grow into a career with them out against potential but now are required to pool with make sure his skills are similar you understand that to see things and the two elements and the disciplines was born and then you can install the exercise all how you are going to be able to work with the uncle who invented Cibo really your blind on the other side of the equation Yeah it’s fascinating you bring it up that way because that’s starting to make me think about things like for example makers who get promoted into manager roles I see them struggle often because of just that they’re they’re not prepared to deal with that manager mindset of scheduling and process management and execution management because they’re used to being able to do things the other thing that throws that that kind of floors me a little bit is and I need to circle back after this and take a closer look at it I almost have to wonder from and this is software development but it’s spreading broader the concept of agile product to Vittie an agile project management and agile development I’m wondering if that’s almost has a nuance of trying to force the make or schedule on managers because of how it works against or it gets away from a lot of classic reporting and data gathering and planning methodology it’s when you look at all of these things that we just ally in this article from two thousand and nine but it hasn’t made it. Hasn’t it hasn’t deteriorated over time the concept of same we’re still struggling with this on a daily basis regardless of the size role or placement within our own process productivity spheres or that the larger productivity sphere as a whole as to how to get this working and I have to wonder this is a very high level concept this is a ten to twenty thousand foot level concept how do we get this lower Choy an executable level three things three kinds of awareness that I just came I heard us talking about so one is job awareness which is what the job require of me and I think so what we’ve been talking about is what happens when for example America becomes a manager or a manager needs to do more making and they don’t know how so there’s there’s a an awareness of what your job demands of you and that only N.-S. is pretty loyal It’s a skill he needs to develop in our the sense of what does my environment ask of me in terms of the way I manage my schedule I think that awareness is pretty low but I think it’s something that can be caught or at least it could be grandfathered into someone who is newly appointed to become an executive the C.E.O. sat down with them and said to her and said listen you need the block of say. A week to work on creative stuff like the strategy for your area if you don’t do it you’re going to get eaten alive or come in early clock and work for but if you don’t have it you’re going to die it’s a tip but it leads to a much larger conversation which is what those the job require me one of the company. The first one is out of my job and we’re in this kind of scale the second one is a person of the awareness which is what we thought the vote also which is given that I’m a he and T.J. for example might have what will come easier to me and what won’t what do I need to get. Started the book that are talked about that kind of information is also practical and easy to feel somewhat easy to find if you do the right assessment and you pay attention to your behavior all the time you got to read a bit of history you start to learn that OK here’s how I work I get lots of my best ideas but I’m actually not in the mix on the scale to a kind of mindset happens when I’m running or research says a lot of good ideas happen in the evening when you’re relaxed because your mind is thinking doing more free associating it’s not it’s not trying to go around step one step two step three Step four it’s relaxed and you get better ideas when you’re not trying so hard basically that’s a path that someone can go on which is given and or not much about myself how can I get to the point where really know my propensity to follow a particular schedule on which one will work for me and then the third one last one is what I would call calendar awareness which has nothing to do with the individual’s PERCY It’s more of a mechanical function of kind of like what we talk about how that’s got people who are very effective with their calendars use them in a particular way and they’re able to there’s a there’s a strong correlation between what they’re doing at any particular point in time and what’s on their economy but it’s not because they’re rigid it’s because they are aware so they need to change change with their plan for the afternoon for example or the next zero or they simply going to work out and make a change and then get to work so they’re aware of sort of what I’m doing no I’m flexible to change it but I know what I’m doing no fits into the sort of the large of sweep of what after and for the week people who aren’t aware about the thought by contrast of the novices just months from one task to the next pending on whichever way the rhesus blowing and we know that that doesn’t work so I think there’s those three awarenesses I think that all of them can be taught by a. See a coach who sits though with someone or in a classroom and I think based on our conversation last week that there are novice level of each of the three and then there are sort of expert levels and both of you get the expert the more effective we could become there’s a test called sixteen personalities and it’s a free personality test that I highly recommend to everyone while the veracity of Myers Briggs or any other type disc any a gram you name it those kinds of personality or social style indicators those assessments there’s a level of of confirmation bias and a little bit of reading into things that you must do but I think that can be very very useful sixteen personalities to me is one of the most effective ones it’s a free one that you can do online and there’s a link to it in the show notes and then doubling back to art and your and your discussion about where we are in society and getting our head wrapped around how knowledge workers can be most productive I think this comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding by management in business that in order to make individuals more productive we need to make them more like machines and that they need to mentally crank out widgets and that’s going to that’s going to lead to value and I think I think we have not yet disconnected an industrial conveyor belt style concept of productivity with inputs and outputs being equal and so we are looking at coding and software programming concepts like agile and extreme agile programming to come into the project management world to really infuse that into into into the individual workers mindset but the reality is the brain and I and I would agree that this is sort of extended into a locker C. And the idea of whole ocracy and all into that the show notes also but the idea that we have this flat management structure and people can therefore operate in a particular way I think that sort of not the slate counter but it’s definitely trying to. Figure it out what is the appropriate management mechanism for getting value out of people and we are still in the I believe infancy of learning what and how to do that and I think we’re seeing that play out by the bye for two of these one a massive amount of focus on personal productivity today but which I think is important but also different methodologies surfacing for purposes of doing that and I’m going to agree with you there and not to go off the rails with this but until organizations stop viewing people as resources and truly start to look at them as individuals again with beneficial skill sets and detrimental skill sets and learn to manage and work with people in that manner this is not going to change anytime soon from an organizational standpoint so the only time you’re able to change and exhibit control over that is for your own personal productivity and work this into your environment if you can if you’re in a position where you can apply this to other people that’s great but just recognize if anyone who’s listening to this and says oh yeah I’m going to go change the world I know you’re not going to change the world with this type of an approach any time soon because there’s a lot of legacy inertia in the systems themselves this will be a long slow process to implement this type of a change at the organizational level but as an individual I could see you could probably implement this in in a relatively short period of time but when I say short I meaning months and months. I feel like I’ve accomplished something Lynn I am able to sort of help someone to stop struggling with the world thought in terms of what I thought about them implementing it if I can explain to them a little bit of a whole the world around them works really were. And if they can stop trying to force it to be the way it isn’t then it will never be I sometimes feel like I’m coming this thread create the it’s better then it may at first be like I’m seeing you know surrender give up you’re never to end anything but I think that’s something proposed to be done from understanding hope people who are at the deep enough level that you stop fighting the way they are in favor of at some point shaping what they do but you sort of got to embrace the fact that this is just the way things are and if you feel as if that’s that’s a big accomplishment when working with people just accept that this is no people work and that’s not going to change in your life that I like to harken this to the military concept of embrace the suck. Head and do you know there are still some level of about in every organization. It’s funny because I always use that when I talk about Share Point with with organizations and companies are like oh yeah things are going to get so much better I go No no no no let me explain share point it’s only going to do an excellent job of showing you how dysfunctional your organization actually is fixing beyond that is up to you but it’s going to get harder before it gets easier and that as the way it is I do want to talk a little bit about techniques and some of the tools that we all use in order to manage so to speak our maker manager and even our artists or individual time what are the tools or skills that we need to learn in order to be able to do these things well I don’t really have a specific tool to handle this approach but I can tell you what I’m going to try over the next couple of weeks because I live out a Google Calendar just because of personal scheduling and professional scheduling I’m going to try and build out these four mean approaches within the Google calendar structure to be able to say this is my maker time this is my manager time this is my. Individual types and see how that resonates for me I need to be able to do it at that ten thousand foot level and then plug into those time blocks things that have to be accomplished for that type of activity it’s going to take a lot of navel gazing but I think I’m going to be able to implement it so the tool I’m going to try and tackle it with is Google Calendar coupled with to do it we’ll see how it goes added Dr recommendation this is a pitch for Sky because it allows you to set up time maps which are overlapping maps of a lot of heat heat maps and you can create for Make a time and I don’t want to manage a time of I have to stand and they could be I said it could be overlapping and when you create a task it looks for available time within the appropriate and just basically places that they’re so that’s the tool that I use to to move around my tasks so that they match my preferred times or preferred time slots but I think anyone anyone can can pick up whether they’re using any kind of calendar can I can start by doing some of what we’ve been talking about which is the block Block aims for particular kinds of work and schedule activities sort of within their own time up time maps sorry their own preferences as long as you sort of keep track of what you’re doing and even better if you actually use something like Rescue Time to track what well it’s going there’s a lot to learn from your own behavior to spend doing the doing those using those two tools a sort of you come first to the on the stand in for me has been a little bit more complex than just here but the problem there and the class manager I don’t think you have to do with either of those tools has to do with how different the mindset is from how much we turn to. Savor the comforts of the side of the minds of those who are stronger with what I’m trying to say was is twenty years more than mine a year that’s or comfort zone and have you tried to have more time or more prevalent to this mater your brain will try to kick back and say but you want to monitored Come on let’s a schedule isn’t one of minutes and that has been for me the biggest chunk more even than the tools more even than the column the second. Arsonist are started in crime and understanding the concept and I think that’s the first and most challenging step then you need to go and look from two things One is are there way I’m using the tools compatible with a layover maybe Joe most likely the answer is no and if the answer is No then Harrow my maker or my manager or the plan in words or a strong suit or worse a suit you can’t use right now that most need me to change those projects on those tasks that are not made by my strongest suit so if you are the manager and you’re trying to implement a more make or turn Well if your calendar work him on the way just eat right now as a manager and I understand the answer is No So what do you need to be a more stronger made to to be able to create a balance to the problem is if you try to use the tools the Jew hog in the same way you are using them it’s not the tools you are using you are not going to be able to because what you are trying to do is make the maker work of the manager or vice versa the first step Kelong interest in the sense that require you to how do your current sure or the new tools. Are going to allow you. To be able to give a better use of the miles the minds of the you are struggling with so again if you tend to think more like a manager and you need to give more serious mater consonant than worry tools or hire do you need to a ball too so you can be really a factor when you try to do tasks on projects that are more than make or Korean you know and you mention you know when we talk about the a certain project that you work though or say well you know that that one in the specific was a major project and I told you well the problem is you need to look into first what is a minimum buyable amount of time but to me Who are these uncertain you need to understand them know even if you get that amount of time you will not be able to say a great are nine AM I will have an hour and I will be able to be a fact department no human interest than the next twenty minutes getting down to the place so you can be a doctor will last have an hour the last forty minutes and on understanding that difference one will reduce Incredibly the frustration that this kind of things problems but second will allows you to finally be able to understand how you need to tweak the tools so you can use it and it doesn’t matter if you are a manager or you country more towards him by a year or more towards America if you frame prong if you are made clear you are used to bigger chunk or long time so you need to figure out how you make them a smaller and smaller as more of the struggle literally visceral agreed I will I will add to the four we close out one is I am a strong advocate from a practical perspective of using calendar schedulers most people who know me in my personal and business life know. That if you want to talk to me you should schedule time in my calendar in order to do so and that just creates a sense of a number of things One is that I’m going to be able to prepared to talk to you if it’s for professional reasons or even if it’s for personal reasons I was recently talking to my parents about a transaction they were doing and I want to be able to read the contract before I talk to them again so you know it’s about saying OK send me that documentation so that I can read it and then we’ll talk again tomorrow at X. Time and that allows all of us to be on the same page as opposed to not being on the same page so I really like the idea of scheduling time and that also means that that time is blocked out so I can get myself mentally prepared to be in that modality for that person or persons that I have to speak to and I really find it fundamentally more helpful for me to be clear minded and prepared to speak to someone then to get a phone call at ten am and to just stop what I was doing pick up where I was where I was with that person in that project at that time and somehow perform well I just don’t particularly like doing that and I also find that I’m more effective when I do schedule so counter schedules are just a beautiful thing and there are you know most of them are have at least a free opt option today and are really quite easy to set up and synchronize with your calendar the other is actually on the topic of what it used to was talking about it triggered a thought for me which is there’s a book called Top brain bottom brain by Dr Steven am Kosslyn and when Miller and this talks about the idea of the top brain in the bottom brain and I just think it would be it’s an interesting book to wrap your head around. A science or or neuroscience based concept of personality styles and I think it’s sort of an interesting thought experiment to think about your your brain in terms of its you. No operating modes and how that actually affects your you know your job or role as well as how you calendar and schedule talking about sort of the three awarenesses that Francis was was mentioning earlier that personality and social style is so much influenced by your cognitive abilities and and then spread into your job slash role in your professional life as well as how you time calendar or schedule your world so I think those are really really wonderful All right well this takes us to the end of this episode of productivity Cass the weekly show of all things personal productivity I’m recently spoke with is just an out and thank you to our galaxy and Francis Wade for joining us here as always so thanks everybody and that’s it for this product to be cast the weekly show about all things product to Vittie with your hosts Ray Sidney Smith and against open out with Francis Wade and our galaxy.