» Paul Graham: Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

This could also be subtitled, "Why Greg's blogging here is more sporadic than he wishes."

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.

I tend to do better on blogging current events because I read a lot more along those lines and it's easy to pick out a few examples during the day to just riff on. Typically, it's not as if I need a lot of time to formulate an opinion or a reaction. And when I commit the thought to pixelated form, it doesn't take a great deal of time to go from reading a news item to blogging about it. Every once in a while, I'll want to dive deeper into something, but that doesn't have to happen every day. Generally, it's for much of the same reasons that Graham writes: interruptions, meetings, assorted daily annoyances, etc ....

Here, my preferred blogging method is aimed at being a bit more introspective and tackling a thought in some minor degree of depth. That means I generally need more free time for what little blogging I get done here. Lacking that, there's always some cool video to post of either a really great moment from Lakewood or from something else that captures my attention.

Reminds me ... I still have an excerpt from NT Wright's "The New Testament and the People of God" that's overdue for here. Very different process of reading a book knowing that I'm giving myself a year to work through it. I'm a lot less unnerved by having to re-read sections of the book. And this one is more academic than I usually prefer to read. Already, I'm suddenly have a need to do some googling and learn about Rudolf Bultmann just to fully comprehend the second half of one chapter. Definitely makes the reading a bit more of a gradual process, but it's proven to be worthwhile so far.