Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

For years my calendar belonged to everyone but me.

A meeting here, a “quick sync” there,
a morning chopped into slivers
too small to think in.

And I couldn’t understand
why the real work —
the hard, deep work —
never seemed to move.

Then I read a simple idea
that reorganized my week.

There are two kinds of days.
The manager’s day, built of small slots
and check-ins and switching.
And the maker’s day, which needs
long, unbroken blocks
where a hard thing can finally open up.

I was a maker
living on a manager’s calendar,
and it was quietly killing my best work.

Every interruption
didn’t cost me the interruption.
It cost me the climb back —
the twenty minutes of finding the thread
I’d just been forced to drop.

So I started defending one block a day.

No meetings. No pings.
Just the work that only happens
when nothing else is allowed in.

I stopped apologizing for it.
I put it on the calendar like it mattered,
because it did.

I didn’t need more hours.

I needed a few of them
whole.

– Serguey Asael Shinder