Sometimes is seems as though there are two people living inside my head, and they couldn't be more different. My homunculus and his doppelganger.
The first wakes up to Slack/Teams notifications and calendar invites. He thinks in quarterly goals, today's urgent actions, and team dynamics. His day is measured in meetings attended, decisions made, and problems solved for other people. He exists in the constant present tense of organizational needs. Always available, always responsive, always thinking about the human beings who depend on his leadership to do their best work.
The second person emerges in the quiet hours. He thinks in loops and chord progressions, in elegant code structures and creative problems that have no stakeholders except himself. His time moves differently. Sometimes an hour feels like minutes when the flow state hits, sometimes a simple creative block stretches into days. He exists in possibility, in the space between what is and what could be.
These two selves have been coexisting in my mind for I can't even recall how long, and I've come to think of them as The Manager and The Maker, and understanding their relationship has become essential to understanding myself.
The Two Worlds They Create
The Manager operates in a world of interdependence. Every decision ripples through multiple people, every conversation matters for team morale, every email could be the one that unblocks someone's day. This world demands presence, availability, and the constant calibration of human dynamics. It's a world where success is measured collectively. Are people growing? Is everyone aligned?
The Maker inhabits a world of deep focus and individual flow. Here, interruptions aren't just inconvenient, they're destructive. A single interruption can shatter hours of careful focus. This world demands solitude, unbroken time blocks, and the luxury of following ideas wherever they lead. Joy here is intensely personal. Did the code compile elegantly? Does the melody capture the feeling I was reaching for?
These worlds operate on fundamentally different principles. The Manager's world values responsiveness; the Maker's world requires protection from responsiveness. The Manager succeeds through collaboration; the Maker needs isolation. The Manager thinks in solutions; the Maker explores problems.
The Impossible Schedule
The cruel joke is that both worlds demand prime hours. The Manager's most important work happens when the team is active. During core business hours when decisions need to be made and blockers need to be removed. The Maker's best work happens when the mind is fresh and undivided, and often those same precious morning hours.
I've tried every schedule hack in the book. Early mornings before the team wakes up. Late nights after everyone logs off. Protected afternoon blocks that inevitably get eaten by "quick questions" that turn into hour-long troubleshooting sessions. The reality is that both selves need more than just time, they need different types of energy, different mental states, different environments.
The Manager thrives on cognitive switching, moving fluidly between different problems and people. The Maker withers under context switching, needing long runways to build up intellectual momentum. One self's fuel is the other's poison.
The Unexpected Harmony
But here's what I've discovered over the years. These two selves aren't just coexisting, they're informing each other in ways that make both better.
The Maker's mindset has made me a better manager. The patience required to debug complex code translates to the patience needed to work through team conflicts. The systematic thinking needed to architect software helps me design better processes and team structures. The creative problem-solving muscles developed through music composition help me find novel solutions to organizational challenges.
The Manager's experience has enriched my creative work. Leading teams has taught me about iteration, feedback, and skills that apply directly to creative projects. Understanding human psychology and motivation has informed how I approach both coding challenges and musical expression. The empathy developed through customer support work finds its way into every creative decision.
Most surprisingly, the constraint of having limited time for creative work has actually improved the quality of that work. When you only have two hours to code or an hour to work on a song, you become ruthless about focus. You skip the perfectionist rabbit holes and get to the essence faster. Scarcity breeds intensity.
Living in Both Worlds
I've stopped trying to resolve the tension between The Manager and The Maker. Instead, I've learned to honor both, even when they seem to be pulling in opposite directions.
Some days, the Manager dominates completely. Crisis management, team building, strategic planning sessions that stretch into the evening. I've learned to recognize these seasons and not force creative work when there's no mental space for it.
Other days, usually weekends or rare quiet periods, The Maker gets extended time to run. These sessions are precious not just for what they produce, but for how they recharge something essential in me that management work alone cannot touch.
The key insight has been recognizing that I'm not trying to balance two hobbies or two responsibilities. I'm integrating two fundamental aspects of how I think and create value in the world. The Manager and The Maker aren't competing for my attention, they're collaborating on a life that requires both structured leadership and unstructured exploration.
The Reality We Create
Haruki Murakami wrote about how our internal worlds become our external reality. In my case, this dual existence has created a career and a life that couldn't exist without both selves present.
The teams I build benefit from a leader who understands both the systematic thinking of engineering and the iterative process of creative work. The code I write is informed by years of thinking about user experience and human needs. The music I make carries lessons learned from shipping products and managing deadlines.
More than that, this dual existence has created a personal reality where work and creativity aren't separate spheres but interconnected aspects of the same pursuit: building things that matter, whether they're teams, software, or songs.
The Manager and The Maker used to feel like they were at war for my time and attention. Now I see them as collaborative partners in the ongoing project of becoming who I'm meant to be. They create different worlds, yes, but those worlds overlap and inform each other in ways that make both richer than either could be alone.
The uncertain walls between management and making aren't barriers—they're permeable boundaries that allow the best of both worlds to flow through.