RR#123 - I Overhauled My Productivity Approach—Here’s What Happened
As small business owners, we wear a lot of hats—all at once.
We’re the strategists, the operators, the creators, the marketers, the sales team, and more.
We juggle different jobs every day.
Some tasks mean back-to-back Zoom calls, meetings, and putting out fires.
Others need long, uninterrupted stretches to create, strategize, and work on the business.
For years, I thought I’d found a solid balance between these two modes of work using time blocking with some basic guidelines for scheduling, like no calls before a set time, limiting the number of calls in a day, and scheduling a short break in between each of them.
But I realized my approach, while balanced, wasn’t optimal.
The Problem With My Old Approach
In theory, my boundaries around calls and meetings seemed like a great way to protect my energy and prevent burnout.
And to an extent, it worked.
But in practice, it created a new problem: daily calls left me with only small chunks of time to ‘do work.’
And that’s fine for surface-level work, like catching up on Slack or knocking out a few emails. But it’s a disaster for deep work, like creative and strategic thinking that requires long stretches of uninterrupted time.
This highlights the challenge for us entrepreneurs: we need to create productivity systems that enable us to do both essential, surface-level work and equally essential deep work.
Managers and Makers
The first time I heard this paradox articulated was in legendary investor Paul Graham’s blog post, “Maker’s Schedule and Manager’s Schedule.”
In it, Graham breaks down the two different schedules.
Maker’s Schedule: Large, uninterrupted blocks of time dedicated to deep, creative work.
Manager’s Schedule: Chopped-up chunks of time filled with meetings, decisions, and coordination.
Understanding the difference between these schedules is crucial for structuring a workweek that balances productivity and creativity.
As entrepreneurs, we have both Maker’s and Manager’s work to tackle. But trying to fit deep, creative work into the gaps between meetings just doesn’t cut it.
Knowing you have a call in an hour can keep you from getting started, and even if you do, stopping mid-flow makes it hard to regain momentum when you return.
I understood this conceptually, but it wasn’t until I watched Alex Hormozi’s YouTube video revisiting Graham’s post that I rethought and changed my entire meeting structure.
The New Approach: Maker’s Days & Manager’s Days
The shift I made was twofold:
Stack all my meetings onto dedicated days back-to-back, with no breaks in between.
This is an incentive to keep meetings as short as possible and end them on time. Plus, the time between calls wasn’t terribly productive anyway.
Keep dedicated days and half-days open to do creative and strategic work.
This allows me to pick just a couple of things to focus on, like writing copy for a landing page and an email sequence, and get into a flow state without any looming interruptions.
I’ve run this schedule for over a month, and it’s had a massive impact on my ability to get shit done.
Creative projects I’ve been chipping away at for weeks and months, like rewriting copy for our Community page and publishing our LinkedIn client acquisition training, have been completed and published.
And those dreaded days of nothing but Zoom calls? Not nearly as bad as I thought.
Knowing it’s going to be a marathon of meetings, I show up with a completely different mindset. I roll up my sleeves (well, proverbial sleeves 🎽), rip through the day, and end it with as much energy as I would’ve with a few calls on the calendar—but having cleared the rest of the week for deep work.
Applying This To Your Schedule
There was a time early on when clearing a full day, or even half a day, would’ve been tough. As I’ve systematized and productized the business, though, I’ve created significantly more margin in my day.
But if you’re thinking, “Cool concept, Ray, but if you saw my clients and calendar, you’d understand why I can’t.”
Rest assured, I’ve had very high-profile and incredibly demanding clients. So, I would challenge you to find the pockets you can and build on them over time.
Take a look at your calendar and ask:
Are all of those meetings truly necessary?
Can those that are be cut in half?
How much time could you free up stacking them all back-to-back?
Here’s the no-bullshit reality: If you don’t carve out time for deep work, you’ll stay stuck in the reactive cycle—putting out fires instead of preventing them.
It worked for me—try it for a week and see what changes. Let me know how it goes.
