Show me a person's calendar, and I'll show you their priorities

How to Audit Your Calendar, Reduce Meeting Overload, and Reclaim Focus Time

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Your calendar is a rich collection of data points to mine for improvements in your personal productivity.

Evenbefore we begin any coaching or training engagement we often face a battle with our client’s seemingly conflicting commitments: “I want to learn this, but Idon’t have time right now” the argument goes.

Our rebuttal (that is proven true time and again) is “this isn’t time away from your work – this is your work. And more often than not, when we are done, I hear statements like “I should have done this sooner/this would have been really useful when I was busy working on Project X/I've achieved more in these two days than I have all year…”  

Naturally, one of the first set of data points we look at when coaching clientsis your calendar. Where are you committing your most valuable resource - your time?

Tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have opened fantastic opportunities for hybrid and remote work but have countered that freedom with an unrealistic expectation that people should be spending their entire working day jumping from meeting to meeting with little to no time to rest, recalibrate or even process what they’ve just absorbed.

It's not unusual for me to see a client's entire day stacked with back-to-back meetings and wonder, when do you do any of the work these meetings have generated? (Unfortunately, increasingly the answer seems to be that's what evenings and weekends are for).

The Problem with Rigid Calendar Systems: Why "SacredTerritory" Doesn't Work

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Some online productivity gurus will argue that their calendar is sacred territory. They protect it fiercely and plan their day meticulously: 5am run, 6am meditate, 7am post on social media, 8am ice bath, 9am ‘crush it!’ – urgh. And to some extent, they are right - your calendar is sacred territory. But if you've ever tried to implement such a rigid structure in your life, you've probably come unstuck very quickly.

Firstly, very few of us have that kind of autonomy over our time at work - if you have a boss, direct reports or even stakeholders or shareholders who you are accountable to, that level of control is rare. If someone more senior than youputs a meeting in your calendar, you should probably try your best to attend.Sorry.

Outside of work, if you have children, a spouse, or friends who you care about, the same is true – “What's that, little Johnny is sick? No, I can't collect them from school. My rigid schedule tells me that I should be journalling right nowand my calendar is sacred territory.” – good luck with that.

Life WILL happen, and you need some grease in the gears.

The Opportunity: Identify and Decline Unnecessary MeetingsHolding You Back

When auditing their diary, a lot of clients find that they're still going to ‘legacy’ meetings they have absolutely no need to be at. “Oh, yeah I was part of that project when it first started but not anymore, and I'm still in the group attending every week.” Do everyone a favour. Decline the meeting series (you may want to check with your boss first, but nine times out of ten this will be fine).

I coached someone recently who was big on people development. He looked at his meetings and figured out that for most of them he could send one of his direct reports in his place. They would get valuable experience from meeting with senior staffers. He would get some time back. They would then meet once a week to debrief and work actions and problems together, which would further increase the staff member’s development.
Apart from meetings, perhaps you've blocked out time to work on certain projects - could any of this be delegated?

Make Required Meetings Work: How to Improve the MeetingsYou Can't Decline

Of course, there are many more meetings that you absolutely should attend. As clients take me through their calendar and explain what's in there, I'm greeted by the inevitable audible groan or visible face palm. These are the meetings that they dread. That's a valuable data point.

What is it about this meeting that drains your energy? Does the meeting need more structure? Do you need to prepare better? Is the meeting unnecessarily long? These questions are a good start to making these meetings more palatable. Once you have a bit more clarity, you need to decide what action you are going to take: Put an agenda in place? Block out time beforehand to make sure you are ready? Suggest a shorter meeting? (Incidentally, most meetings can be shorter). Or the classic - this meeting could have been an email.

One experiment to try out is to change the default meeting duration for new meetings that you create in your Outlook settings (or whichever tool you use). Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the time available) is rife in meetings in organisations all over the world – most hour-long meetings can actually be done in 30-40 minutes.

The Quick Win: Two Questions That TransformEvery Meeting (And Drive Action Items)

If you're trying this for yourself, I suggest auditing at least the week ahead AND the week before - that way you will start to see patterns in the data in your calendar.

One final quick win worth its weight in gold for every meeting you attend from now on- allow time at the end to ask two questions:

·     What are the next actions?

·     Who owns them?

Otherwise, why are you all attending these meetings in the first place?

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