Skip to content
ProtocolFREE, no cost

Maker days and manager days

Whole days given to creative work or to other people, never both

Some days carry nothing on the calendar. A long stretch of writing or thinking survives intact. Others stack teaching, meetings and office hours back to back. Behind the split is research finding that people who concentrate their helping into one day a week end up happier than those who sprinkle small favors across all seven. Paul Graham's essay on maker and manager schedules supplied the names.

People on record

Sorted by strength of stance

Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.

  • Adam GrantDoes it

    Organizational psychologist · Think Again

    Days for his own creative work and days for being available to other people, kept apart. He credits research on chunking generosity into a single helping day, and describes campus days of back-to-back office hours, then a day at home talking to nobody outside his family.

    Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #399 transcript

Other entries filed under productivity or focus.

  • ProtocolFREE, no cost

    Environment design

    Change the room instead of relying on willpower

    On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it, 5 recommend it
  • ProtocolFREE, no cost

    Time blocking

    Give every hour of the workday a job before the day starts

    On record from 7 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 2 recommend it
  • ProtocolFREE, no cost

    Deep work blocks

    Long, scheduled, distraction-free sessions on one cognitively hard task

    On record from 6 of 62 tracked people: 5 do it, 1 recommends it
  • ProtocolFREE, no cost

    Deliberate wandering

    Unplanned, inefficient exploration kept on purpose as the counterweight to efficiency

    On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it
  • ProtocolFREE, no cost

    Digital declutter

    A 30-day break from optional tech, then reintroduce deliberately

    On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 recommend it
  • ProtocolFREE, no cost

    Hard thinking before lunch

    Book the mentally demanding work for the morning and stop making big calls late in the day

    On record from 2 of 62 tracked people: 2 do it

Protocol entry · notes paraphrased from cited sources, quoted excerpts copied from the transcript they link to. Not medical advice. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by anyone listed. How this works.