Paul Graham is so very, very right when he highlights the limitations of managers' view that "one hour" is an important increment of time.

For me, the most important interval is a decade. Get your big goals right, and that huge swath of time will let you do something hugely transformative in your work, your sidelights or your personal relationships. But to get there, you need the stubbornness to work through the hard stuff for a long time without immediate rewards.

You also need the freedom to reinvent your approach a couple times, without feeling embarrassed or doomed.

Being a maker calls for a totally different clock.