Paul Graham on scheduling meetings

Lots of sites have been linking to Paul Graham’s essay on “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” for its clear delineation between one type of schedule, built around meetings, and another, built around vast empty spaces in which you can get things done.  He also makes the point–familiar to anyone who’s ever frittered away an hour’s research time because “there’s no point in starting before the meeting”–that meetings eat up more than just their time on the calendar.

Worth noting for academics is the way Graham has imported the concept of office hours for his venture capital firm:

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.

Academics are often chastised for being insufficiently available, either to students or for meetings, and frequently this chastisement includes some sort of reference to corporate America.  But that’s crazy: No one is always available–or, at least, no one who makes anything that lasts.

You know best when to schedule office hours so that they’re minimally disruptive, so don’t feel shy about enforcing them.  The reason you firewall your meetings into specific times is so you can make your teaching and research more awesome, which in turn serves your students, your university, and your discipline.