Maker Schedule

Paul Graham wrote this really famous flog post called ''Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule'' where he said something all of us thought before but put it in great words.

He introduces the idea of the difference between how makers ie programmers in his case organise their time to be productive verus folks that are managers.

Dalton Caldwell

Most companies are set up around a managers schedule, where you have a day packed with meeting after meeting.

This was not conducive to building things, when you are programming the more of the program you can keep in your head at any one time, the easier it is for you to know what's going on and have the context up to make changes and fix bugs.

Dalton Caldwell

If you have to program in hour increments, man are you going to suck. You constantly have to restart your state every time you program.

A great maker schedule is something like an 8-hour uninterrupted block of time.

Dalton Caldwell

The Right Time

My work day really began around five or six pm.

That's when things would quite down and that's where actually all the good programming happened, was at the end of the day.

Dalton Caldwell

No one who was writing code even wanted to start writing code before lunch, lunch was the big fu in the middle of the day.

Our trick was how do we not serve a lunch that makes everyone go to sleep.

Two, how do we make that post lunch time free of everything.

Michael Seibel

Manager Schedule

If I'm going to be managing my time between my to-do list (important stuff to get done), meetings, email, and slack. I always think my to-do list comes first, I start at my to-do list.

Michael Seibel

Well cause you control it, verus if it's inbox driven other people are in control of your time, which is watch out.

Dalton Caldwell

Meetings

You are going to have to have some meetings, I have seen a couple tricks but they can all be reduced down to write stuff down.

Michael Seibel

Let's make this clear, say you and I are in a meeting if neither of us write it down it's like it never happened.

Dalton Caldwell

Visible KPIs

Any other things that made you productive as a manager.

Michael Seibel

The number one thing I do that I realise that a lot of the other successful founders did too, I had my analytics dashboard or whatever was important KPI's on the business, up on my screen 24/7 and I would stare at it all the time.

A lot of our internal stats I have memorized, it's because I stare at them all the time and no one told me to do that.

I'm obsessed with like the internal key kpis for anything I'm working on, I'm just like an addict to look at that stuff.

Dalton Caldwell

It's funny when you take to a founder who know their stats well, they just talk about their stats differently.

They don't round of numbers to the nearest zero, second of all they know whether they are up or down 10% at any given time.

Where as other founders it's like how do you not know?

Michael Seibel

I don't get when someone is running a business and they are like what was of revenue last month.

Dalton Caldwell

Your Main Focus

What I learned that I didn't appreciate when I was a founder is that the maker schedule vibe works for sales and talking to customers too and scheduling 20 minute blocks to talk to customers is not the same as an 8-hour.

Even if it's that you are not a programmer using the Maker's concept to apply to the things that are the main event of your startup, for many people that is sales, you should be scheduling 8 hour blocks.

Dalton Caldwell

I agree with you, it's basically this idea of get all of this stupid crap so productive, that every founder can clear out a chunk of their time for their maker schedule.

Some founders will have to do more of this non-development blocking tackling others will have to do less of it.

It's really hard to get anything at a high level done in 20 minute blocks.

Michael Seibel

Social Media

Let's talk about what we see great founders not do.

Michael Seibel

The trickiest thing for everybody is social media, it's like the black hole for time.

It's addictive and what's tricky is how to have a healthy relationship with social media.

Imagine if there was a hidden camera auditing what people did with a lot of their time, I think people would be embarrassed.

Dalton Caldwell

I had a twitter problem and you know one of the things I realised is that, sometimes willpower isn't enough.

I was just like you know this is an addictive thing, I need an intervention (talking about a chrome extension).

Michael Seibel

I uninstalled Facebook years ago, I don't have the twitter app, everyone should do what works for them.

People that actually are super productive, do abnormal things to turn all this crap off.

You have to be aggressively abnormal on protecting your time because if you don't the world is going to steal your time from you.

Dalton Caldwell

There are these two sets of tools, one set of tools allow you to organise your time better and there's another set of tools to protect your time.

Effective people use both constantly, ineffective people are sometimes mistaken and they think if I just had a stronger will but needing tools it the problem.

''Successful people just have a stronger will'' that's not true successful people reach for tools all the time.

Successful people recognise their weakness and actually reach for tools.

Michael Seibel

Being Proud of Your Work

I tend to tell people similar stuff which is look if you're proud of the job you did, if you had heart and gave it your all and you feel like you learnt stuff then great job and you should view this as an affirmative experience. I'm proud of you, I'm proud of the job you did, I know you had your heart in this thing and we'll get the next one.

If you are proud of the work you did you will view this as a positive thing in your life.

Dalton Caldwell

Key Quotes

• "Well cause you control it, verus if it's inbox driven other people are in control of your time." - Dalton Caldwell
• "The number one thing I do ... important KPI's on the business, up on my screen 24/7 and I would stare at it all the time." - Dalton Caldwell
• "You have to be aggressively abnormal on protecting your time because if you don't the world is going to steal your time from you." - Dalton Caldwell
• "Successful people recognise their weakness and actually reach for tools." - Michael Seibel
• "If you are proud of the work you did you will view this as a positive thing in your life." - Dalton Caldwell

Key Thoughts

This was an amazing video, one of my favourites from YC. The focus and effort that successful people put into controlling their time and viewing as not making time but instead protecting your valuable time is great.

Visualising KPI's is something I hope to do in this next coming week a lot better.

Lastly I love the last quote by Dalton on being proud of putting your all into the work you do and viewing as that as nothing else but a positive thing in your life.