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原文链接：
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
July 2009One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.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.I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you're a maker, think of your own case. Don't your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule, they're in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.Our case is an unusual one. Nearly all investors, including all VCs I know, operate on the manager's schedule. But Y Combinator runs on the maker's schedule. Rtm and Trevor and I do because we always have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she's gotten into sync with us.I wouldn't be surprised if there start to be more companies like us. I suspect founders may increasingly be able to resist, or at least postpone, turning into managers, just as a few decades ago they started to be able to resist switching from jeans to suits.How do we manage to advise so many startups on the maker's schedule? By using the classic device for simulating the manager's schedule within the maker's: office hours. Several times a week I set aside a chunk of time to meet founders we've funded. These chunks of time are at the end of my working day, and I wrote a signup program that ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hours are clustered at the end. Because they come at the end of my day these meetings are never an interruption. (Unless their working day ends at the same time as mine, the meeting presumably interrupts theirs, but since they made the appointment it must be worth it to them.) During busy periods, office hours sometimes get long enough that they compress the day, but they never interrupt it. When we were working on our own startup, back in the 90s, I evolved another trick for partitioning the day. I used to program from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come in and work until dinner on what I called "business stuff." I never thought of it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the manager's schedule and one on the maker's.When you're operating on the manager's schedule you can do something you'd never want to do on the maker's: you can have speculative meetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another. If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it will turn out you can help one another in some way.Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to "grab coffee," for example.Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them.Till recently we weren't clear in our own minds about the source of the problem. We just took it for granted that we had to either blow our schedules or offend people. But now that I've realized what's going on, perhaps there's a third option: to write something explaining the two types of schedule. Maybe eventually, if the conflict between the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule starts to be more widely understood, it will become less of a problem.Those of us on the maker's schedule are willing to compromise. We know we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from those on the manager's schedule is that they understand the cost. Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.Related:
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
 
 
"...the mere consciousness of an engagement will sometimes worry a whole day."
"...仅仅意识到一项承诺有时会让一整天都焦虑不安。"
 
– Charles Dickens  
–查尔斯·狄更斯
 
July 2009 
2009 年 7 月
 
One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.
程序员如此厌恶会议的一个原因是,他们的时间安排与其他人不同。会议对他们的成本更高。
 
There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour.
有两种时间表，我称之为管理者时间表和创作者时间表。管理者时间表是为老板准备的。它体现在传统的预约簿中，每天被划分为一小时的时间间隔。如果需要的话,你可以为一个单一任务预留几个小时,但默认情况下,你每小时都在做不同的事情。
 
When you use time that way, it's merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you're done.
当您以这种方式使用时间时,与某人会面仅仅是一个实际问题。在您的日程安排中找到一个空闲时段,预定他们,就完成了。
 
Most powerful people are on the manager's schedule. It's the schedule of command. But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started.
大多数有影响力的人都按照管理者的时间表工作。这是一种命令式的时间表。但是,像程序员和作家这样的人,有另一种使用时间的方式。他们通常至少会以半天为单位来使用时间。你无法在一小时的时间内很好地写作或编程。这几乎不足以开始工作。
 
When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.
当你按照制造商的时间表运作时,会议就是一场灾难。一次会议可能会破坏整个下午,将其划分为两个太小而无法做任何重要事情的时段。此外,你还必须记得参加这次会议。对于管理者时间表上的人来说,这不是问题。下一个小时总有事情来临;唯一的问题是是什么。但是,当制造者时间表上的人有会议时,他们必须考虑这件事。
 
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.
对于在制作者时间表上的人来说,参加会议就像抛出一个异常。它不仅仅让你从一个任务切换到另一个任务;它改变了你工作的模式。
 
I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you're a maker, think of your own case. Don't your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.
我发现一次会议有时会影响整个一天的工作。一次会议通常会占用至少半天时间,打断上午或下午的工作。此外,还可能会产生级联效应。如果我知道下午会被打断,我就不太可能在上午开始做一些雄心勃勃的工作。这可能听起来过于敏感,但如果你是一个制造者,试想想你自己的情况。当你整天都没有任何预约,可以自由工作时,你的斗志不是会大大提高吗?那么相应地,当你无法这样做时,你的斗志也会大大降低。雄心勃勃的项目本质上都是在你的能力边缘,稍微一点士气的下降就可能会让它们夭折。
 
Each type of schedule works fine by itself. Problems arise when they meet. Since most powerful people operate on the manager's schedule, they're in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency if they want to. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they know that some of the people working for them need long chunks of time to work in.
每种类型的时间表本身都可以很好地工作。问题会出现在它们彼此相遇的时候。由于大多数有权势的人都在经理的时间表上运作,如果他们想的话,他们就有能力让所有人都共振在他们的频率上。但更聪明的人会抑制住自己,如果他们知道自己的一些员工需要大块时间来工作。
 
Our case is an unusual one. Nearly all investors, including all VCs I know, operate on the manager's schedule. But Y Combinator runs on the maker's schedule. Rtm and Trevor and I do because we always have, and Jessica does too, mostly, because she's gotten into sync with us.
我们的案例是一个不寻常的案例。几乎所有的投资者,包括我认识的所有风险投资公司,都是按照经理的时间表运作的。但是 Y Combinator 是按照创造者的时间表运作的。Rtm、Trevor 和我一直如此,杰西卡也是如此,主要是因为她已经与我们同步了。
 
I wouldn't be surprised if there start to be more companies like us. I suspect founders may increasingly be able to resist, or at least postpone, turning into managers, just as a few decades ago they started to be able to resist switching from jeans to suits.
如果开始出现更多像我们这样的公司,我也不会感到惊讶。我怀疑创始人可能越来越能够抵制或至少推迟成为管理者,就像几十年前他们开始能够从牛仔裤转向西装一样。
 
How do we manage to advise so many startups on the maker's schedule? By using the classic device for simulating the manager's schedule within the maker's: office hours. Several times a week I set aside a chunk of time to meet founders we've funded. These chunks of time are at the end of my working day, and I wrote a signup program that ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hours are clustered at the end. Because they come at the end of my day these meetings are never an interruption. (Unless their working day ends at the same time as mine, the meeting presumably interrupts theirs, but since they made the appointment it must be worth it to them.) During busy periods, office hours sometimes get long enough that they compress the day, but they never interrupt it.
我们如何能够为如此多的初创企业提供建议,同时遵守"制造者时间表"?通过使用经典的"管理者时间表"模拟设备:办公时间。每周几次,我会预留一段时间来见已获得资金的创始人。这些时间段在我工作日的结尾,我编写了一个预约程序,确保在给定的办公时间内的所有预约都集中在最后。因为它们在我一天的结尾,所以这些会议从不会打断我。(除非他们的工作日与我的结束时间一致,否则会议可能会打断他们,但既然他们已预约,那对他们来说肯定是值得的。)在繁忙期间,办公时间有时会变得很长,压缩了一天的时间,但从不会打断工作。
 
When we were working on our own startup, back in the 90s, I evolved another trick for partitioning the day. I used to program from dinner till about 3 am every day, because at night no one could interrupt me. Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come in and work until dinner on what I called "business stuff." I never thought of it in these terms, but in effect I had two workdays each day, one on the manager's schedule and one on the maker's.
当我们在 90 年代运营自己的创业公司时,我发展了另一个将一天划分的技巧。我每天都会从晚餐开始编程到大约凌晨 3 点,因为晚上没有人能打扰我。然后我会睡到大约上午 11 点,然后进来工作直到晚餐时间,我把这称为"业务性工作"。我从未用这些词语来描述过,但实际上我每天有两个工作日,一个是按照管理者的时间表,另一个是按照制造者的时间表。
 
When you're operating on the manager's schedule you can do something you'd never want to do on the maker's: you can have speculative meetings. You can meet someone just to get to know one another. If you have an empty slot in your schedule, why not? Maybe it will turn out you can help one another in some way.
当您采用管理者的时间表时,您可以做一些在创作者的时间表上是绝对不想做的事情:您可以召开探讨性的会议。您可以仅仅是为了互相了解而与某人见面。如果您的日程安排中有空闲时间,为什么不这样做?也许您们最终能够以某种方式互帮互助。
 
Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They're effectively free if you're on the manager's schedule. They're so common that there's distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to "grab coffee," for example.
硅谷的商务人士(以及全世界其他地方的人)经常进行投机性会议。如果你在经理的日程表上,这些会议实际上是免费的。这种会议非常普遍,甚至有专门的用语来表示提议会面,例如说"一起喝咖啡"。
 
Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you're on the maker's schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager's schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day's work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them.
如果您处于制造商时间表上,规范性会议是非常昂贵的。这使我们陷入了一种困境。每个人都认为,像其他投资者一样,我们遵循管理人员的时间表。因此,他们会将我们介绍给他们认为我们应该见面的人,或发送电子邮件建议我们去喝咖啡。此时我们有两种选择,都不太好:我们可以与他们会面,并损失半个工作日的时间;或者我们可以尝试避免与他们会面,但可能会冒犯他们。
 
Till recently we weren't clear in our own minds about the source of the problem. We just took it for granted that we had to either blow our schedules or offend people. But now that I've realized what's going on, perhaps there's a third option: to write something explaining the two types of schedule. Maybe eventually, if the conflict between the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule starts to be more widely understood, it will become less of a problem.
直到最近,我们对问题的根源并不很清楚。我们只是认为,必须要么推迟时间表,要么得罪别人。但现在我明白了问题所在,也许还有第三种选择:写些东西解释这两种时间表的区别。如果管理者时间表和创作者时间表之间的冲突被更广泛地理解,或许最终这种问题会减少。
 
Those of us on the maker's schedule are willing to compromise. We know we have to have some number of meetings. All we ask from those on the manager's schedule is that they understand the cost.
我们这些按制造商的时间表工作的人是愿意妥协的。我们知道我们必须有一些会议。我们对于那些按管理人员的时间表工作的人所要求的就是,他们要理解这种做法的成本。
 
Thanks to Sam Altman, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
感谢 Sam Altman、Trevor Blackwell、Paul Buchheit、Jessica Livingston 和 Robert Morris 对本文初稿的审阅。