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Maker vs manager: How to connect your schedule to your goals
Mastering The Maker And Manager Schedule
- Use a time-tracking app and review the kind of activities that are done during the day and how much time the activities take.
- Categorize those activities as ‘maker’ or ‘manager’.
- Find the daily patterns and use that information to schedule your ‘maker time’.
- Keep an eye on the stuff that interrupts you the most and try to eliminate or minimize the same.
- Take a review at the end of each week to make some tweaks in your schedule.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
8
Key Ideas
Switching between tasks
Most of us spend our days jumping between tasks and tools.
In fact, most people average only 3 minutes on any given task before switching to something else (and only 2 minutes on a di...
Task switching and focus
Taking on additional tasks simultaneously can destroy up to 80% of your productive time:
- Focusing on one task at a time = 100% of your productive time available.
- Juggling two tasks at a time = 40% of your productive time for each and 20% lost to context switching.
- Juggling three tasks at a time = 20% of your productive time for each and 40% lost to context switching.
A schedule for sustained attention
- Large chunks of focused “flow” time for more demanding projects.
- “Themed” days to reduce the need to recalibrate between different tasks.
- Advanced planning so you can prioritize meaningful work.
- Realistic time set aside for admin, communication, and meetings.
- Clear expectations for your teammates so they know when not to interrupt you.
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Key Ideas
The urgency bias
We usually give priority to unimportant tasks when there is a sense of urgency around them.
We’re actually psychologically wired to put aside important tasks in favor of ta...
Why it’s hard to ignore urgent tasks
A few explanations as to why it’s so hard to reject urgent tasks:
- The completion bias. Our brains crave the reward we get from checking off small to-dos from our list.
- Tunnel vision: When we get overwhelmed by the things we have to do, we choose to act on those most available to us; these are usually emails, calls, meetings, and other low-friction tasks.
Urgency puts us into reactive mode
The problem is that we’re continually bombarded with urgent work: emails, meetings, calls, and instead of being in control of our time and attention, we respond and act on someone else’s priorities.
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Key Ideas
Productivity Shame
Work is never finished, and we are unable to disconnect from it, causing us to experience productivity shame, impacting our happiness and creativity.
The modern working pro...
The Busyness Paradox: Addicted To Being Busy
- Personal productivity is not about all-round efficiency, and it is wrong to think about your input as that of a machine in a factory unit.
- This is further complicated by our mistaken assumption that being in demand means that we are doing a splendid job.
- We blur our all boundaries between our work and personal life and every minute of the day is to be kept busy as we rush to attend every meeting, cross out every task from the to-do list or to answer every email that we get.
Completion Bias
Our brain starts to favour small tasks that give a false impression of productivity (woohoo! I just sent out fifty emails!) while we neglect the large, complex but meaningful tasks.
This is known as the completion bias.