Computer programmers sit in an interesting place in our world.
They are makers. And since their stock has risen in our economy, they’ve come to the fore as trend-setters and innovators of work. We all know they’ve brought the hoodie and jean “suit” to the office, but they’re also advocating for us to view time in new ways, which is quite cool and in service to all creatives, no matter the industry.
VIEWING TIME IN NEW WAYS
Paul Graham, an influential computer scientist, essayist and co-founder of the infamous Y Combinator, for example, has introduced the maker vs manager schedule concept.
“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…
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.”
Creative work is ambitious work, and in Graham’s eyes, needs wide stretches of time. Why? Because there’s a different frequency to this type of work. It’s more than “head” work. Spirit is involved.
“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.”
His point on creative projects being “close to the limits of your capacity” strikes me as a point worth lingering on. When we’re moving into the realm of building something that doesn’t yet exist, we sense the limitations of what we know. And so, we also sense that we need to go deeper, wider.
TIME HAS DIFFERENT SHAPES
The book Deep Work by computer scientist Cal Newport provides examples of great minds finding brilliant ideas under blocks of time that are deep, long and uninterrupted.
Newport says, great creative minds think like artists.
To summon their creative intelligence, artists structure their days into chunks patterned by simplicity, ritual, solitude and a lack of interruptions.
Complex problem-solving, ironically, requires simplicity. And simplicity, we all know, is hard to find and must be intentionally carved out.
The real problem, Newport says, is our addiction to distraction. He sites the research of Stanford professor Clifford Nass:
“Once your brain has become accustomed to on-demand distraction, Nass discovered, it’s hard to shake the addiction even when you want to concentrate. To put this more concretely: If every moment of potential boredom in your life—say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives—is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where, like the “mental wrecks” in Nass’s research, it’s not ready for deep work—even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration.”
Making in-between time an opportunity to slow down and declutter my mind has become a thing I’m trying to cultivate with deep breathing. Or, a painter friend told me, “try to see in-between time as an opportunity to do a creative visualization where you’re wielding a paint brush and painting everything one colour.”
Newport says:
Your goal is not to stick to a given schedule at all costs; it’s instead to maintain, at all times, a thoughtful say in what you’re doing with your time.
In other words: take back your time. Make it yours, not someone else’s. Don’t invite more mental clutter.
DEEP MAKER TIME IS FULL OF FRUSTRATION & REVELATION
Of course, deep maker time is not linear and it rarely feels efficient when you’re in it.
The documentary Get Back, reveals the Beatles’ messy creative process in making the album “Let It Be” in 1970. In the film, the band has less than 3 weeks to write and record the album. In every scene, deep work is happening. In fact, I’d say deep time is a central character.
In those days and hours the songs come together slowly and almost always through stretches of focus and meanderings, frustrations and revelations.
I can’t get enough of this clip of George Harrison describing his quest to find the word “Lover” for his song “Something.” It took him 6 months!
I think this all means time is a thing to be shaped and trusted, even when it feels it’s working against us.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that schedules are our friends. Schedules honour the work and force us to come back, again and again, to our purpose, even when our projects move more slowly than we’d like.