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Being new to my current company, one of the big differences I’ve had to adjust to is meetings. For a while we had a daily 10AM meeting and then occasionally we’d have another meeting at some point in the day. Paul Graham wrote a great article on the topic that hits the problem well.
The basic concept is that makers work in 3 to 4 hour chunks. When a maker gets into work, they really don’t like distractions for three to four hours. From a programmer’s stand point, this is very true. There isn’t much you can accomplish in 40 to 60 minute chunks. Its about that time frame when you’ve fully identified the problem and are ready to start writing some final code to fix the issue at hand. Then managers work in hour chunks. Each hour starts fresh with what is on tap. So a meeting doesn’t really hurt their day because it is just what they need to do that hour.
You can read the source article here. If for some reason that is no longer available, here is a PDF of the same article.
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