This morning I read a post by Seth Godin, a favorite of mine, which presented and discussed an essay written by Paul Graham of Y-Combinator called Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.

I regret that this cogent essay and essayist have escaped my notice until now. It reveals what every programmer knows and has experienced with regard to meetings, and I’ve never found a better treatment of the subject.

It confirms with clarity that programming is a creative art, an act of creation or making. Such work cannot be effective and productive with multiple disruptive meetings every day. And sometimes it only takes one meeting, even a short one, to blow your whole day.

Why?

The content and contention in a single meeting can serve to distract a programmer to the point of rendering him effectively useless for the remainder of the day. This is true not only for the programmer but for anyone whose primary function is to make things of complexity.

Consider preventing the daily standup from becoming a meeting in which the resolution of identified impediments is attempted. And never allow the standup to devolve into an ad hoc project status review and planning meeting with the question, “When will you have X feature done?” being asked.

Consider piling all such meetings to which makers must be in attendance into one single day of the week, perhaps Friday or Monday to ensure the largest contiguous uninterrupted period for making, preferably in the late afternoon, so that we get every ounce of making from our makers that the company’s hard won cash can buy.

It’s more than something to think about. It’s something a manager could manage if the manager simply chose to do so, and it’s something a maker would appreciate more than can be expressed in written word.