Welcome back to Field Notes – my running log of small discoveries that shape how I think, lead and create. One idea at a time, shared while it is still fresh from the field.

Picture by me, 2020: Pensionnat du Saint-Nom-de-Marie is a French private highschool for girls in Outremont, Montreal. I took this on one of my walks in the early days of the pandemic when the world was on lockdown.

🔍What I Noticed

Last week, I had one of those days: I worked hard, but somehow nothing got checked off my to-do list. I spent an entire day toggling between reviewing our website pre-launch, drafting articles, and handling networking calls. By day’s end, everything was still pending: half of the site still needed review, two articles were half-baked, and I wasn’t any closer to hiring a lawyer for our pre-seed round.

After chewing on my frustrations throughout a boxing class, I realized the real problem wasn’t discipline or drive. My attention simply didn’t match the needs of the work in front of me.

Paul Graham’s classic 2009 essay ‘Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule’ offers a lens for this dilemma:

• Maker time: long, continuous blocks for creative, strategic, or analytical deep work.
• Manager time: short, structured intervals for meetings, decision-making, coordination.

Most business problems require both. And yet how often do we try tackle deep problems in the cracks between the meetings that proliferate our calendars and the emails that drown our inbox?

🗺️ The Maker/Manager Problem-Solving Framework

Where once I’d have blamed a lack of discipline for slow progress, I now believe it’s about deliberate engineering of time and attention. Just as breathwork done right enhances performance, problem-solving means matching the attention mode to the true demands of the task and accepting that meaningful progress may happen more slowly, but with greater clarity and less rework.

Here’s how I structure my problem-solving approach for something like startup funding, applying Graham’s Maker/Manager model to each step:

Problem-Solving Step	Job to Be Done	Attention Mode	Startup Example
1. Frame the Problem	What are we really trying to solve? Identify and challenge assumptions, clarify objectives, define success.	Maker: best done in the quiet hours before the world gets noisy.	Deep dive into funding constraints, jursidictions, grants.
2. Understand Stakeholders	Who is affected? What matters to them?	Maker then Manager: solo refelection followed by intentional outreach.	Map comprehensive list of investors. Consult advisors and co-founder.
3. Map & Prioritize Sub-Problems	What deserves attention first? Break into discrete issues, sort needs vs wants, identify dependencies, rank priorities.	Maker: deep focus yield richer breakdowns.	Sort legal, financial, networking questions.
4. Audit Resources & Gaps	What is missing: skills, information, money, or connections? Assess required vs available resources, identify and bridge gaps.	Manager: batch calls & emails, coordinate quick iterative action.	Gather referrals, vet networks.
5. Develop & Test Solutions	Where are we going? Generate options, run small scenarios or tests, explore how how paths converge or diverge.	Maker: requires uninterrupted time to get lost before getting clear.	Sketch and iterate capital structures.
6. Plan & Act	How do we get there? Assign tasks, schedule & track actions, adjust project plan. Measure progress to outcomes.	Manager: classic project management.	Schedule meetings, move documents forward.

By sequencing tasks according to attention mode, I avoid cramming creative analysis into leftover time.

📝 Why It Matters

When I worked in corporate, structure was handed to us, which I found sometimes stifling. However, I’ve learned from Toastmasters that constraints are necessary for creativity to thrive. But in startups, there are no guardrails. There are no established processes, no regular meeting cadences…. There is only what we design.

By engineering my schedule to match each problem-solving phase – especially giving deep work its necessary space even if it means a two-day Maker task is spread over four Maker half-day mornings – has unlocked better solutions and significantly less rework. Fewer sprints, more marathons. This is more than just my personal preference: it’s the difference between playing to win and just spinning wheels, wasting resources. It’s how my cofounder and I are laying scalable foundations for growth.

Of course, some problems really do require immediate action. Learning to triage firefighting from strategic issues deserves its own post. But for foundational work? Protecting attention is strategy, not luxury.

💡 How I’m Integrating It

My calendar reflects these learnings:

• Mornings (7am-1pm): Maker time for framing, researching, modeling, writing.
• Afternoons (1pm-5pm): Manager time for meetings, coordination, execution.
• Fridays: Synthesis & reset – reflect, realign, prep for next week.

When urgency builds and productivity slips, I check: Am I matching the attention mode to what the work requires or am I defaulting to reactivity? If I have to triage an emergency, so be it. But for everything else, I guard my calendar, knowing patience now compounds into quality and speed later.

📣 From Me to We

As founders, freelancers and leaders, imagine our potential impact if we intentionally built schedules that protect the right kind of attention at each problem-solving step. What if we stopped defaulting to back-to-back sprints and started designing marathons, letting deep work happen in the rhythm it requires? What would it do to our teams?

Maybe the real impact comes when we accept that scheduling our attention is strategy.