Claim your time and calendar

Does this scenario sound familiar? You log in at 8:55 Monday morning to discover someone's put a last-minute 9 o'clock meeting on your calendar. Your inbox is a mess. You'd thought you'd take the morning to prep for the week, but the day is derailed, again. What's worse, you're pretty sure this meeting could have been an email.

Do you feel like you spend your days reacting to other people's needs? Wish you could gain some control over your workday?

I've got you. That's right, we're talking about boundaries.

Today I'm sharing the strategies I use to manage my calendar, reclaim my time, and save my energy for the things I prioritize.

We have too many meetings

At this point, the existence of the meeting pandemic isn't up for debate. Employees spend an average of 18 hours per week in meetings. One in five spends more than 30% of their work week in meetings. I'd wager that number is much higher depending on role and industry. When are we supposed to do our actual jobs when we're stuck in meetings talking about doing our jobs.

A few years ago, I noticed that my calendar was out of control. There was literally no white space available for me to do work. I was in back-to-back meetings all day, every day. So I got curious. First, I got curious about where I was spending my time.

Tip 1: Color Coding

I was the type of student who color-coded my highlighters and post-it notes. My books were slashed like the rainbow. For example, when highlighting a Linguistics textbook, I’d use pink for phonetics, yellow for insights, green for socio-linguistics, blue for language evolution, etc. You get the gist.

When I decided to get curious about where I was spending my time, I applied the same tactics. This gave me the opportunity to audit my time and energy. Here’s what I discovered:

1. I was spending way too much time in “program update” meetings. If I owned those meetings, I reduced the time frame (from 60 to 30 minutes), reduced the cadence, or cancelled them and used email to provide stakeholders with regular updates. If someone else owned those meetings, I reached out and asked if we could adjust them similarly.
2. There were remnants of recurring meetings either I or the other attendees regularly declined. These were mostly with former teammates and projects I no longer supported. Even if we wanted to keep in touch, the regular meeting became a bit of a burden. So I reached out and said, “Let’s cancel the series for now and grab a coffee when we want to catch up.”
3. I was not spending nearly enough time on my own career development. I blocked off one hour each week to take training, meet with a mentor, or develop skills.

My advice is to color code in a way that makes sense to you. Do you want to assign colors by program, team or leader, type of work? My calendar colors are a mix of all three. You do you. Here's my color code:

1. Lavender: Affinity Group Work
2. Pink: Communications & Events
3. Yellow: Professional Development
4. Red: Program Work
5. Purple: Hiring
6. Teal: Senior Leader
7. Green: Team Meeting
8. Blue: Travel
9. Orange: PTO/Leave
10. Gray: Work Time

The last two colors in my calendar are indicators of when I’m either not working or not taking meetings. These are my secret powers. More on that below.

How to feel empowered saying "No"

Employees want to decline nearly one-third of all meeting invites, but only actually decline 14%. I get it, we feel bad saying “no” for a number of reasons. Any other people-pleasers out there?

Raises hand excitedly

Yes, I sat in the front row in school.

Why don’t we decline more meetings? We want to be there to support our team members, we want to show them we value their work and time, and maybe we just don’t want to rock the boat. However, we contribute our best at work when we can show up un-stressed about our meeting load, workload, and everything else we should be doing (including rest).

Tip 2: Calendar Blocking

I mention calendar blocking at least weekly. Like, it comes up a lot. It is the primary tool I use to manage my time at work, balance my work and life responsibilities, and maintain my focus on my priorities. What does “calendar blocking” mean? It means setting up your calendar in a way that works for your life and that empowers you to say “no” or “not now” to unnecessary meetings.

Some of the aspects that go into my time Jenga and that make calendar blocking NECESSARY are being part of a global team and being a mom. Leading a global team, my work day spans four time zones: Seattle, DC, London, Sydney. It’s near impossible to find a time that works for everyone. My second boss turns 2 in April. ‘Nuff said.

Here are the key ways to effectively block your calendar:

1. Set up your work hours. In your calendar settings, indicate the days of the week you work and your work hours (ex: Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm). This becomes particularly important when you work with a global team. It’s not just conflicting time zones that can challenge a calendar. Some places around the world work Sunday through Thursday. Maybe you have other responsibilities in the morning and your working hours are Noon to 8pm. Setting your work hours in your calendar will indicate to others when you are available for a meeting. If your working hours are ignored, here’s a response template to gently push back and request a time that works for all attendees. “I’d love to meet with you to discuss XYZ. I’m located in on the East Coast and generally am available 10am to 5pm. Can we move this meeting to a time that will work for both of us?”
2. Show as Out of Office. When going on vacation or will be otherwise out of the office, let your colleagues and key stakeholders know by first sending a calendar invite, that will not mark recipients as Busy, with the subject line something like “Cassandra PTO 2/1-2/7.” This way, they will see a reminder banner on their calendar that you’ll be out and unavailable. Then edit your own calendar entry to show as “Out of Office” so it shows up as unavailable to anyone else looking to set a meeting with you. Your last line of defense in maintaining PTO is the out of office message.
3. Block time for life stuff. I have standing calendar blocks from 7-9am and 5-7:30pm every day to be a mom. These show as Out of Office in my calendar and I generally do not take meetings during these times because I’m either getting my toddler ready for the day or doing dinner and bedtime. If you’ve tried wrangling a toddler while leading a meeting on a serious topic… you know this is a nearly impossible task. When absolutely necessary, usually due to time zone gymnastics, my team knows the “unpaid intern” will be joining us, and they can expect my level of engagement and focus is going to be different than at other times in the day.
4. Block open time in advance. This is the game changer. I have standing meetings on my calendar throughout the week. Every Friday, I look through my calendar for the following week and block any open space that hasn’t been booked using my Gray Work Time color code. This ensures I know exactly what my week will look like (no surprise meetings), I’ll have time big chunks of time to work on projects or write, and I can ensure I’m working on things that are important, and not just urgent.

I am not a night person.

My husband can attest, I’m usually in bed asleep by 9pm. I feel most energized, most creative between 10am to 2pm; that’s when I get my best work done. My brain really stops firing around 3pm. Instead of working against my body and brain, I go with it. I schedule chucks of time late-morning when I can work on big creative tasks or write strategy docs (we do a lot of that at Amazon), and I save administrative tasks for the late-afternoon.

Tip 3: Work with your circadian rhythm

When do you get your best work done? Are you a morning person? A night owl? What would your work product look like if you got invest your most productive time on your deep work? How would you feel about that work if you weren’t trying to fight the fog of morning when you don’t really get going until 4pm?

I schedule my weekly team 1:1s on Mondays. And that’s it. The rest of the day is planning for the week, catching up with email, and working through our biggest priorities. Tuesday through Thursday I take other meetings around mid-day when I can be most engaged in the work. And Friday is a no-meeting day (see Bonus Tip below) where I can focus entirely on getting things done.

While it’s tricky with our time zone differences to stick to these preferences 100 percent of the time, I do my best, and it’s made a huge difference in how I’m able to show up at work and at home.

Bonus tip: Four-day work week

I’m incredibly lucky to work for a team that recognized our pandemic meeting load was unsustainable and causing burnout. We adopted meeting-free Fridays in 2021 and haven't looked back. A whole day free from internal meetings to focus on deep, creative work, to catch up on emails, do long-term planning, and even to catch up on chores or take care of appointments we otherwise would not be able to make for the weekend.

I LOVE my Focus Fridays.

If you’re in a position to suggest or implement a four-day work week, or a weekly meeting-free day, 10/10 highly recommend.

If this isn’t something you can get your HR or leaders to support, perhaps pick a day and one of my calendar blocking strategies to choose your own meeting-free day.

If you've enjoyed this edition of Make Work Suck Less, and would like more of my insights around career growth, employee experience, and work-life balance, subscribe here.