A maker's most critical work is often invisible problem-solving, which can look like being stuck or idle. This period of intense thought is not a precursor to work; it is the work itself. Judging makers on visible activity misses the point and devalues the creative process.
Managers work in small time blocks, so a meeting is just one of many. Makers require large, uninterrupted chunks. A single meeting breaks a large block into two unusable smaller ones, effectively destroying an entire half-day's worth of productive output for the maker.
The Zeigarnik effect causes the brain to fixate on open loops, like a future meeting. For a maker, this scheduled task consumes mental bandwidth, disrupts immersion, and forces clock-watching, killing productivity hours before the meeting even begins. The cost is far greater than the meeting's duration.
When a maker's performance drops, managers often increase check-in meetings to 'help'. These interruptions further fragment the maker's time, causing performance to drop even more. This creates a productivity death spiral where the manager's intended solution becomes the root cause of the problem.
When a necessary meeting breaks a maker's large time block, they shouldn't try to salvage the small surrounding chunks. Instead, they should treat the entire day as a 'manager day,' packing it with as many meetings and administrative tasks as possible to protect other days for uninterrupted deep work.