Chef's time vs Soldier's time

The notion of maker's schedule vs manager's schedule is well known. It highlights and protects makers's need for flow, something not in the general awareness of people in business.

Corollary to that is something I call chef's time vs soldier's time, as a way to manage how different roles experience time at work.

A chef's work is spread uniformingly across a work day. A soldier's real work (not fake busy-work) is concentrated in a very specific time frame, sometimes only a few days in a year if at all.

First let's define chef. Clearly I'm not referring literally to only kitchen staff. These roles extend to all makers and creators. Specifics roles that come to mind are writers, teachers, gardeners, traders, and of course programmers.

Similarly soldiers refers to roles that are seasonal in nature. Here's some that I can cite: musicians, actors, event managers, football club managers, professional politicians (but not administrators). Interestingly I tend to think of dev/ops as soldier but that's debatable.

Chefs are typically makers, a creative producer of something. Soldiers may also be produce but tend to perform than make. All managers I can think are soldiers.

In Breaking Bad universe Walter White would be a chef, Gus Fring would be a soldier.

Now let's break down how they are different in the time dimension.

Chef-time is about consistency and efficiency. Every hour not being productive is a wasted hour.

There's no point for soldiers to be efficient. Most of the time is spent in rest and preparation. Execution time for soldier is much more intense, therefore soldier-time need slack.

Chefs do not enjoy surprises. Things that are off-script is a signal that something has gone wrong.

Soldiers are all about surprises. They dedicate their lives in preparation for surprises. Soldiers crave surprises so much they are sensitive to over-routine.

Therefore soldiers deal with changes better than chefs. Changes are sources of surprises, therefore excitement to soldiers.

These battle of orientation can be framed as discipline vs freedom. Chefs value discipline more while soldiers value freedom.

Chefs's sense of time is highly regulated and uniformed. Creatively, every day could be uniquely challenging for a chef but to an outsider every day look the same.

Soldiers's sense of time is marked by handful of historical events. Most of their time may be spent waiting, being idle, quietly thinking or designing. When the time strikes, there would moments of truth to results of their effort so far. As a result life of a soldier makes for a more illustrious biography.

Chefs grind; soldiers bet.

Chefs lean into their crafts for spiritual fulfillment. Their creative act is the end in and of itself.

Soldiers have to be explicit about their purposes in order to remind themselves why they do what they do. A literal soldier spent most of their time practicing by being in mock battles. This is spiritually unfulfilling unless they have patriotic messages drilled into their head from time to time. Therefore all motivational workshops are designed for soldiers.

So what does this all mean? I can't begin to cover all the implications.

I arrived at this when my co-worker was taken out of commission and I was left with the dev/ops responsibilities, managing unexpected offline servers in multiple occasions. While I do have the skills, the orientation-shift from chef to soldier was exceedingly difficult. I was unknowingly hanging on to being a maker/chef and did not anticipate having to take on surprises managing servers.

As a stakeholder making bets in people, it's easier to invest in a chef than a soldier. A chef is predictable but soldier has more chaotic potential. A bet on a solder is therefore high-risk-high-reward.