Article · short

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

Paul Graham · paulgraham.com Free Beginner

The essay that explains why one badly-placed meeting can destroy a founder's entire day of building, and what to do about it. Essential mental model for anyone who both makes and manages.

  • Makers need time in half-day units; managers slice time into one-hour appointments
  • A single meeting can wreck a maker's whole afternoon by fragmenting the block
  • Batch meetings into designated windows to protect long stretches of deep work
  • Founders who both build and manage must consciously switch between the two modes
Open on paulgraham.com ↗

It answers 11 questions

  1. How do I spend my time on the things only I, the founder, can do?
  2. Why do meetings destroy my whole day of building?
  3. How do I do focused deep work when everything is constantly on fire?
  4. What's a realistic time-management system for a founder with zero spare hours?
  5. How do product teams keep a consistent shipping rhythm as they grow?
  6. How do I stop context-switching between fundraising, product, sales, and hiring from wrecking my brain every single day?
  7. How do I stop saying yes to every coffee, podcast, and networking event and getting nothing shipped?
  8. How do I keep an offshore or remote dev team accountable across time zones?
  9. How much of my week should I spend on sales versus building the product in the early days?
  10. How do I manage my own time and priorities with no boss, no team, and everything on fire at once?
  11. How do I keep shipping weekly when I am building solo and constantly interrupted by support, sales, and admin?

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