I Let a Pigeon Manage My Calendar for a Week

The premise was simple. My calendar was a disaster, my own decisions had gotten me there, so I would outsource scheduling to an entity with no stake in my anxieties: a pigeon. I named her Deborah. I gave her a windowsill and a grid of seeds, one pile per hour of the working day.

The method

The system was rigorous, I'll have you know:

• Each hour of the day was a small pile of seeds on a laminated grid.
• Whichever pile Deborah ate first became the next thing I did.
• No appeals. No rescheduling. Deborah's ruling was final.

function nextMeeting(piles: SeedPile[]): Hour {
  // Deborah does not read this code. Deborah does not need to.
  return piles.sort((a, b) => a.peckedAt - b.peckedAt)[0].hour;
}

What happened

Monday was chaos. Deborah scheduled a "deep work block" at 8 AM and then a second, identical deep work block immediately after, ignoring three actual meetings.

Wednesday she ate the 2 PM pile, the 3 PM pile, and then aggressively the laminated grid itself, which I interpreted as cancel everything. I cancelled everything. It was the best afternoon I'd had in months.

Friday she refused to eat at all until noon, which forced a slow morning I did not know I needed.

Deborah does not believe in back-to-back meetings. Deborah believes in eating when hungry and resting when full. Deborah, it turns out, is a better manager than I am.

The results

Conclusion

I have not given the calendar back to myself. Why would I. Deborah requests payment in seeds and asks for nothing else, and she has never once double-booked me with my own dentist. The arrangement continues.