How to regain control of your calendar

Whether you love them or loathe them - for most people leaders, meetings make up a significant part of the working day.

When your schedule shifts gears from busy to back to back, running from meeting to meeting can quickly lead to a sense of overwhelm and chaos. Sometimes it can even feel like there’s no time left in the day to tackle the rest of your workload.

In this cheat sheet, we’ll suggest some simple ideas to help you take a step back and create more space.

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Do: get comfortable declining meetings

Amongst 1:1’s and team standups (both of which take time but are useful for creating alignment and ensuring your team are well supported), it’s likely that a few vaguely mysterious recurring meetings may have snuck into your calendar over time.

The purpose of these gatherings may once have been clear - but has certainly now been lost to the sands of time. These meetings are often easily identified by the frustration they provoke. They may require very little active input from you or involve sharing information that could be distributed asynchronously.

Getting into the habit of asking whether you’re actually needed for meetings like this can save a lot of time - as can simply declining them and communicating to the meeting owner that they should pull you in when you’re actually needed to contribute.

If you are the one leading one of these meetings, then it might be time to rethink it. Which brings us on to…

Do: practice good meeting hygiene

Bringing a bit of rigour and structure to the meetings you lead pays dividends.

Use this quick checklist as a starting point:

Make sure you have a clear agenda;
Ensure all participants are clear on any prep they need to do and what will be required of them in the meeting;
Curate the invite list so you have everyone in the room you need and no-one that you don’t;
Book only as long as you actually require and timebox discussions.

For more tips on running effective meetings, take a look at this article.

Do: schedule yourself first

In order to keep your diary under control, it’s important to look ahead rather than going with the flow.

One tip I’ve shared with lots of managers during my career as a People person is setting time aside regularly to review upcoming commitments.

I also encourage managers to schedule their own work and personal priorities first - whether that’s focus time, exercise or the school run. If you squeeze these commitments in as an afterthought, you are more likely to skip them and your colleagues are unlikely to understand how important they are to you.

Scheduling yourself first means that you are able to set and honour your own boundaries and make space to do what you need to do, rather than having your time be dictated by other people and their priorities.

Do: try meeting clusters

One of the issues with having meetings distributed across your day or week is context switching.

According to a study by the University of California Irvine, it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption or distraction.

One thing that worked for me when I managed a large team was clustering 1:1’s over one or two days every fortnight. Whilst this can require a lot of energy, it left me more uninterrupted focus time across the week. It also meant I was better able to understand how the team were doing overall and spot trends quickly.

Of course, it’s important to make sure this approach suits your direct reports. Whilst you’re at it, you could also check in on your 1:1 cadence. Although 1:1’s are crucially important, your team members may have different views on how frequently it makes sense to meet, so it’s important to agree on this together and revisit it when necessary.

Do: think async

If there is one thing we’ve learnt from the pandemic, it’s that there are many ways to work together whilst being physically distant from one another.

From Miro boards to Slack channels, most workplaces have a range of different tools to help make asynchronous working easier.

Getting into the habit of asking yourself whether a meeting is going to make things faster or slow things down is another effective way to wean yourself off having a consistently packed calendar.

Do: challenge the wider meeting culture

Our final tip for creating space in your diary is to avoid tackling the problem alone.

Every organisation has their own meeting culture, with its own quirks. This means it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be alone in having issues with the amount of meetings you’re being roped into.

Sharing the challenges you’re having with others means that you can create company-wide initiatives to improve your calendar culture - from training sessions on good meeting practices to entirely meeting-free days.

Bringing it all together

It’s easy to look at your schedule and feel daunted by the task of cleaning it up. We’d encourage you to experiment and see what really works for you. Happy calendar-culling!

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