Are all creators antisocial nerds who hate interacting with their coworkers?

Do they just always have their head in the clouds?

Why do creators really seem so anti-meetings when all you invite them to is a quick 30-minute chat?

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, Jakub Sroka talks about the reasons behind the eternal struggle of creators who have to attend work meetings, and he does so from two perspectives: that of a creator and that of a manager.

As Chief Design Officer, Jakub takes on two roles. He is a creator who works on designs, and then he is also a leader of a team that he mentors and guides on a daily basis. At NaviParking, the tech startup he works for, a majority of employees work remotely, meaning they primarily interact with each other through video calls, which means he works with his team this way too. On our podcast, Jakub explains why meetings make work so hard for him as a creator and for other creators such as programmers and writers.

“The nature of those tasks is that they usually need some deeper focus, and they require heavier chunks of focused time, and that’s why if someone throws in a meeting in the middle of such a focused session, it may affect the whole day even for those people”.

As a manager and a member of the management team, there are many crucial calls he needs to attend throughout the day but still needs time to create. How does he make this work? Since meetings are usually 30, 60 or 90 minutes, does the solution lie in dividing up your workday into 90-minute sessions? Jakub claims that no, this is not the answer.

Still, is inviting your coworker, who happens to be a creator, to a last-minute meeting in the middle of the workday so bad?

“In some extreme cases, it may result in that in this half of the day a creative person wouldn’t achieve anything more than just attending a meeting because the rest of the time will be just destroyed by this bump that landed in the middle of the time slot”.

Watch the full episode to go inside the mind of a creator, discover how they work and as someone with over ten years of experience, what tips Jakub has for creators and why he thinks you should try the 4-hour rule that he lives by.