Creator Mode, Manager Mode
Programmers do not like meetings for one reason: they work on a completely different schedule than other people. Meetings are more expensive.
Paul Graham's Essay translated into Alconost .
There are two modes of operation, which I call the manager mode and the creator mode. Manager mode is designed for managers. It is embodied in the traditional meeting planner, where every day is divided into hourly intervals. You can schedule several hours to complete one task, if needed, but usually every hour you do something else.
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When you use time like this, you are unlikely to have a problem if you need to meet someone. Find a free hour in your schedule, book it and everything is done.
Most influential people work as a manager. This is also a command mode. But there is another way to use time that is familiar to people creating things, such as programmers and writers. They mostly prefer to divide the working time into units of larger ones - no less than half a day. You will not be able to write a good program, devoting one hour to it. This time is short, even to get started.
And if you are working in a creator mode, meetings are a disaster. One meeting can destroy half of the working day, breaking it into smaller parts - too short to have time to do something serious. Plus, you should not forget to come to the meeting. This is not a problem for a person in the manager mode: for each hour they have something else planned, the only question is what exactly. But if the meeting is scheduled for a person in creator mode, he really needs to remember about her all the time.
The meeting for the person in the creator mode is the exception that arises during the execution of the program. It does not just switch you from one task to another, it changes the mode of operation.
In my case, one meeting can affect the whole working day. Usually it destroys the first or the second half of the day, but sometimes the cascade effect works: if I know that there will be a meeting after lunch and I don’t work, I can hardly take up anything serious in the morning. This may seem an exaggeration, but if you are a creator, just think about how it happens with you. Doesn't it add to your enthusiasm the understanding that the whole day is free from meetings and you can finally work? If this is the case, then you are depressed when the day is completely unavailable to you. And you are barely enough for ambitious projects. And a bad mood will be enough to fail them.
Each mode of operation is well applicable separately. Problems arise only when they are mixed. Since most influential people work in the managerial regime, they can, if they wish, demand from their subordinates a coincidence with their regime. But the smartest of them hold back if they know that some people working on them need longer time to do work.
Our case is unusual. Almost all investors, including all venture investors known to me, work in the manager mode. But Y Combinator works in creator mode. This is how Robert and Trevor and I work, because we have always worked this way. And Jessica entered into this mode, synchronized with us.
I would not be surprised if companies like ours will become more and more. It seems to me that the founders will be able to prevent or at least delay the transformation into managers just as they once abandoned the obligatory disguise from jeans to suits.
How are we going to advise so many startups in creator mode? Thanks to the classic tool for simulating the manager mode inside the creator mode - the allotted time. Several times a week I find some time to meet with those we finance. Under this, I always take a couple of hours at the end of my working day, and I wrote a program that controls that all meetings within the allotted time are scheduled as close as possible to the end of the day. Thanks to this, meetings never break my day (although they can break the working day of those who appoint them, but if they go for it, it’s probably worth it). In the most intense periods, the time allotted for meetings can significantly squeeze my work day, but never break it.
When we worked on our startup in the distant 90s, I found another way to allocate time: every day I programmed from lunch until about 3 am, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I slept until 11 in the morning and before lunch I was engaged in what I called "business issues." I never thought about it, but in fact I had two working days every day, one of which was held in the manager mode, the other in the creator mode.
When you work in the manager mode, you can afford what you’ll avoid in the creator mode: optional meetings. You can meet someone just to meet you. If you have free hours in the schedule, then why not? Maybe it will turn out that you will be useful to each other.
Businessmen from Silicon Valley (and indeed the whole world) attend non-binding meetings all the time. Being in the managerial mode, they lose almost nothing. These meetings are so familiar that there was even a special language for their appointment: for example, when you say that you are going to "drink coffee".
But people in the mode of creator optional meetings cost monstrously expensive. It puts us in a stalemate. All around admit that, like other investors, we work in the mode of a manager. Therefore, they represent us to someone with whom they think we should meet, or send us letters inviting us to drink coffee. And at this moment we have two behaviors, both are bad: go to a meeting and lose half a day of work or try to avoid it, which is likely to offend or even offend the initiators of the meeting.
Until recently, we did not fully understand the source of the problem. We simply took it for granted that we would have to either break our schedule or quarrel with people. But now I understand what is happening, and it seems that there is a third option: to clarify that there are two modes of operation. Perhaps over time, the conflict between the manager's regime and the creator's regime will become clearer for everyone and will cease to be such a problem.
People in creator mode agree to compromises. We know that we will have to attend a certain number of meetings. All that we ask people working in the manager mode is to understand what price we pay for the meetings.
About the translator
The article is translated in Alconost.
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Paul Graham's Essay translated into Alconost .
There are two modes of operation, which I call the manager mode and the creator mode. Manager mode is designed for managers. It is embodied in the traditional meeting planner, where every day is divided into hourly intervals. You can schedule several hours to complete one task, if needed, but usually every hour you do something else.
')
When you use time like this, you are unlikely to have a problem if you need to meet someone. Find a free hour in your schedule, book it and everything is done.
Most influential people work as a manager. This is also a command mode. But there is another way to use time that is familiar to people creating things, such as programmers and writers. They mostly prefer to divide the working time into units of larger ones - no less than half a day. You will not be able to write a good program, devoting one hour to it. This time is short, even to get started.
And if you are working in a creator mode, meetings are a disaster. One meeting can destroy half of the working day, breaking it into smaller parts - too short to have time to do something serious. Plus, you should not forget to come to the meeting. This is not a problem for a person in the manager mode: for each hour they have something else planned, the only question is what exactly. But if the meeting is scheduled for a person in creator mode, he really needs to remember about her all the time.
The meeting for the person in the creator mode is the exception that arises during the execution of the program. It does not just switch you from one task to another, it changes the mode of operation.
In my case, one meeting can affect the whole working day. Usually it destroys the first or the second half of the day, but sometimes the cascade effect works: if I know that there will be a meeting after lunch and I don’t work, I can hardly take up anything serious in the morning. This may seem an exaggeration, but if you are a creator, just think about how it happens with you. Doesn't it add to your enthusiasm the understanding that the whole day is free from meetings and you can finally work? If this is the case, then you are depressed when the day is completely unavailable to you. And you are barely enough for ambitious projects. And a bad mood will be enough to fail them.
Each mode of operation is well applicable separately. Problems arise only when they are mixed. Since most influential people work in the managerial regime, they can, if they wish, demand from their subordinates a coincidence with their regime. But the smartest of them hold back if they know that some people working on them need longer time to do work.
Our case is unusual. Almost all investors, including all venture investors known to me, work in the manager mode. But Y Combinator works in creator mode. This is how Robert and Trevor and I work, because we have always worked this way. And Jessica entered into this mode, synchronized with us.
I would not be surprised if companies like ours will become more and more. It seems to me that the founders will be able to prevent or at least delay the transformation into managers just as they once abandoned the obligatory disguise from jeans to suits.
How are we going to advise so many startups in creator mode? Thanks to the classic tool for simulating the manager mode inside the creator mode - the allotted time. Several times a week I find some time to meet with those we finance. Under this, I always take a couple of hours at the end of my working day, and I wrote a program that controls that all meetings within the allotted time are scheduled as close as possible to the end of the day. Thanks to this, meetings never break my day (although they can break the working day of those who appoint them, but if they go for it, it’s probably worth it). In the most intense periods, the time allotted for meetings can significantly squeeze my work day, but never break it.
When we worked on our startup in the distant 90s, I found another way to allocate time: every day I programmed from lunch until about 3 am, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I slept until 11 in the morning and before lunch I was engaged in what I called "business issues." I never thought about it, but in fact I had two working days every day, one of which was held in the manager mode, the other in the creator mode.
When you work in the manager mode, you can afford what you’ll avoid in the creator mode: optional meetings. You can meet someone just to meet you. If you have free hours in the schedule, then why not? Maybe it will turn out that you will be useful to each other.
Businessmen from Silicon Valley (and indeed the whole world) attend non-binding meetings all the time. Being in the managerial mode, they lose almost nothing. These meetings are so familiar that there was even a special language for their appointment: for example, when you say that you are going to "drink coffee".
But people in the mode of creator optional meetings cost monstrously expensive. It puts us in a stalemate. All around admit that, like other investors, we work in the mode of a manager. Therefore, they represent us to someone with whom they think we should meet, or send us letters inviting us to drink coffee. And at this moment we have two behaviors, both are bad: go to a meeting and lose half a day of work or try to avoid it, which is likely to offend or even offend the initiators of the meeting.
Until recently, we did not fully understand the source of the problem. We simply took it for granted that we would have to either break our schedule or quarrel with people. But now I understand what is happening, and it seems that there is a third option: to clarify that there are two modes of operation. Perhaps over time, the conflict between the manager's regime and the creator's regime will become clearer for everyone and will cease to be such a problem.
People in creator mode agree to compromises. We know that we will have to attend a certain number of meetings. All that we ask people working in the manager mode is to understand what price we pay for the meetings.
About the translator
The article is translated in Alconost.
Alconost is engaged in the localization of applications, games and websites in 60 languages. Language translators, linguistic testing, cloud platform with API, continuous localization, 24/7 project managers, any formats of string resources.
We also make advertising and training videos - for websites selling, image, advertising, training, teasers, expliners, trailers for Google Play and the App Store.
Read more: https://alconost.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/181193/
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