Fixing Your Busy Calendar
Regardless of what job function or business unit you are in, it is inevitable at some point or another in your career that you will face one of the most difficult ordeals in the workplace - getting your calendar under control. When you have over a dozen back-to-back meetings, key deliverables are due, and still haven’t started on that deck you are presenting tomorrow, it could be intimidating.
But would you believe me if I said it’s probably your fault? That’s right — a company will eat you alive if you let it, and there would be no limit to the amount of things you can heap on. In turn, this leads to burnout and tons of stress. Read on to learn how you change, leading to happier, healthier, and far more productive work-life balance. You owe it to yourself, your family, and your company.
Managing Time
Managing time is a misnomer; you have no control over time, it is a constant and always ticks away. The richest in the world, the most successful, the most innovative, they are all bound by the same 24 hours in a day that we are. You can’t buy more of it and you can’t go back. Therefore, what you chose to do in that time is up to you, and being successful means making sound decisions to make the best use of the time you have.
The richest in the world, the most successful, the most innovative, they are all bound by the same 24 hours in a day.
In coaching others on time management skills, what I’ve seen over and over is there isn’t enough emphasis placed on planning the day or week — choosing what to do with that time. If you’re convinced it’s not your fault, here are quite a few questions you should ask yourself:
- In the past two weeks, how many meetings did I ask to reschedule to free up my calendar?
- Did my meeting have an agenda in it, including what the goals/purpose of the meeting was? Did I show up with points prepared?
- How many meetings did I lead where I got everyone back on track to solve the purpose of the meeting (in times where they strayed off subject)
- Have I ever evaluated the tradeoffs of attending a meeting today vs. tomorrow (or next week), and did I change it?
- If a people leader, have I ever sent someone in my place to a meeting to free up my time? Remember, delegation is not just giving other people your work, it’s giving them meaningful work which lets them grow professionally.
- Do I have 1:1’s with my manager (and direct reports, if applicable)? Having 1:1’s actually reduces the number of meetings you may need. This is because you see there is dedicated time with someone to discuss an item so you’ll wait for then to chat about it.
- Have I ever started the day, and ended the day, looking at my calendar and my week to see what is there?
- Have I ever questioned a meeting I frequently attend, and discussed with the organizer about no longer attending?
- How many times this year did I stop joining, consolidate, cancel, or change the frequency/timeframe of a recurring meeting?
I’m willing to be that most of these you haven’t done often. If you have, then that’s great! If you have, and you’re still busy, there could be other factors here. Perhaps not enough layering in your org (you can come prepared to discuss with your manager or aim to make changes to distribute responsibilities). It may be a sign it’s time for a new department or job function to be created, expansion opportunities, etc.
Planning & Reducing Clutter
As one of my old managers said, the minute you get into business hours… “it’s on” and most of the time you’re going to be running marathons. Everyone signs in, starts their day, and the madness begins. Phone calls, meetings, scrums, deliverables, emails from others around the globe.. You won’t have time to plan your day then — it’s too late! To get ahold of this, aim to plan your day the night before when things calm down, or earlier that morning (or both) depending upon what kind of person you are and how your week is. See what you need to do, cross-reference it with your todo list, and try to have the most productive week you can.
To plan, start by going through your calendar. Look if there is anything you can do to reduce the clutter. As mentioned above, you should look for items you can ask to skip, or something that can be rescheduled that week. If a people manager, can you send someone in your place?
When you need to schedule a new meeting, it can be time-consumign to find a good slot. Idealy, the faster you can do this, the better. In this case, it’s good to have a color coordination system so scheduling new meetings is a breeze. Let’s look at that next!
Color-Coding Meetings
Did you know that Outlook and many other popular applications support color-coding of meetings? You can assign color categories to each meeting, and when you open your calendar, you’ll see colored blocks for those meetings. If done to a recurring meeting, it will make all those instances that color.
Try to come up with a color scheme that is extremely intuitive to you. Something that with a quick glance you will be able to understand. For example, the red category means an important meeting you cannot miss and likely need buffer time before/after just in case. Yellow could mean a meeting you’re not doing the talking on (for example someone presents KPIs or project statuses to you). Try to think of what a color means to you so it’s immediately clear without even reading the title.
Once you have this system in place, you can apply it as mentioned above. The minute someone asks you to schedule a meeting, you can go to your calendar, and if the colors are in place, you won’t even need to scrutinize the day. For example, you may look at Thursday and think:
“I see I have 3 red things going on this day. I don’t remember them at the moment but I know they’re important, so maybe Thursday is a bad day. Wednesday has some yellows and one green, so that’s probably safer.” — In this case, we demonstrated avoiding too many “red” items in the same day.
Wrapping Up
Calendars can and will get busy, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave it that way. While there is a lot you can do it, few people actually dedicate the time to running an organized calendar. One common thing you’ll see about those who move up in corporations is that they are typically very good with their time management. It makes sense; the more successful ones can manage their time, allowing them to focus on new initiatives, stretch goals, and so on. This organization of time is not a skill you’re born with — it takes practice, focus, and dedication to get better at. The better you can be, the more time you’ll have to focus on meaningful work which will make you more successful.
Good luck!
If you enjoyed reading this, please clap, follow, and subscribe via email to show your support. I would really appreciate it!
Subscribe for more: