Back in '09, Paul Graham wrote about the difference between the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule.
Managers work in one hour chunks, measuring productivity by full days of switching tasks. If a meeting can fit in an open spot on their calendar, it's considered a productive use of time.
Makers work in half day chunks. You can't come up with a scroll-stopping design in thirty minutes, and it takes time to focus enough to put thoughts into a high-converting blog post. The work of making is cognitively demanding, time-consuming, and as Cal Newport might argue: deep.
"For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work."
Meetings cost us more.
That's not to say that we can't work together. Makers absolutely need managers, and managers need makers. Understanding how the other works is essential to creating schedules where we can collaborate effectively and create our best work.
Read the original essay here.
(this post was written on a day with no meetings)