Here’s what you can do when your schedule looks like Swiss cheese
Hi!
As you may know, I’m working on building Rise. It’s a digital calendar that incorporates all the pointers from my book GRIP. One of the features we’ve added is a report generator, to give you insight each week into how you and your coworkers are using your time.
It’s already generated all kinds of new insights for us. Like this one:
Your average calendar is incredibly fragmented. We’ve got meetings breaking up our morning, a good 45 minutes between appointments, and more of the same this afternoon and tomorrow and the next day.
That’s not surprising. When everyone’s schedules are chock-full, it’s hard to find meeting times that work for all of us, let alone times that allow folks to get all those other important things on their list done.
And so we throw away a lot of time. Try as you might, those lost moments in between meetings won’t add up to any real progress on that big job you’re working on. You need bigger chunks of time for that. Meanwhile, that 10:30 meeting doesn’t only interrupt your morning, it can also drain your energy so you don’t get much done that afternoon either.
Regardless of what your schedule looks like, here are a few things you can do today to win time:
Block time. Perhaps the simplest tip of all: Reserve your best time blocks for your own work. This won’t work if you fill up 90% of your calendar, but claiming a few hours every morning should do the trick. The more specific you are about what you have in mind, the easier it is for your team to see that you need the time—and that they’ll need to work around it.
Come up with ground rules with the team. Making smarter choices about time takes practice. A lot of people don’t realize how fragmented their schedules are and what an impact that can have. Take the time to share your discoveries and to come up with some ground rules together. Respect what’s in the team’s calendars and feel free to turn down requests that don’t suit.
Specify your working hours. Calendars like Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook now have more ways to indicate when you are and aren’t available for work. Look into these features and use them to help yourself and the people you work with. Say goodbye for good to meeting requests popping up for times when you’re not on the job.
Use Calendly for outside meets. Do you have a lot of meetings with folks outside your organization? Calendly lets you give people a link so they can pick a time in your schedule. What’s great about this tool is you can set clear specifications, like when are you available for meetings? How many meetings max in one day? How much time do you want between meets?
Not only do you win back the time you would’ve spent pinning down a good date/time, but it also goes a long way to fixing your fragmented schedule.
A small time investment this week can have a big impact—and every week thereafter.
Have a good one,
Rick
PS Here’s another issue I wrote on fixing your fragmented schedule, with pointers on cancelling or rescheduling appointments.
produced by the language girl