Busy at Work? Schedule EVERYTHING!

[canyonwalker]

For several weeks now I've been fairly busy at work. To look at my calendar is to see something that looks like a jigsaw puzzle that is nearly complete. There are almost no unscheduled gaps (blank spaces) left. But partly this is intentional. To cope with a busy schedule from numerous demands I've taken to scheduling everything.

"Schedule everything" means, of course, scheduling meetings. Everyone grasps that. But it also means scheduling a lot of things people otherwise might not think to place on their calendars. Here are three:

1) Lunch. Years ago I wouldn't actually schedule lunch, I'd just take it. There was always time in my day for it. I figure part of that was working with colleagues in the same office. We all expected to eat lunch at similar times of the day, so meetings scheduled around lunch were uncommon. With the shift to remote work, and especially with companies shifting to highly distributed workforces, I have to protect my lunchtime now or I'll lose it. Oh, I'm willing to move my lunchtime around (within reason) to accommodate meetings, and I'm willing to shorten it from an hour to 30 minutes occasionally, but I won't give it up.

2) "Extra innings" for meetings that typically run long. For example, I have a 60 minute daily work session with one client right now that often goes at least a little long. To avoid frequent crises of having to reschedule other meetings, or leave that meeting early, when it goes long, I've added a 30 minute "Extra innings" block to my calendar. If the meeting itself doesn't go that long I generally use the time anyway on issues related to that customer, such as followups and debriefs.

3) Prep time. Everyone knows that formal meetings require an appointment on the calendar, but how about time to create or review materials for those meetings? A perfect example is a technical workshop I'm delivering on Friday this week. I've blocked periods of time yesterday, today, and tomorrow to prep for it. Even though I'd delivered this workshop at least 10 times at this point, I'm using the time to dry-run the latest version of it, verifying that everything still works smoothly. And it's a good thing I started this four days in advance because I've already found showstopper problems twice! And again, the reason I block this time on my calendar is because if I didn't, other commitments would get placed on my calendar and I'd be scrambling to fix busted workshop materials after-hours the night before. The likeliest result of that would be mission failure. 😨

Comments

[sorcyress]

Do you also do this sort of thorough scheduling for your non-work life as well?

(I ask because that's where I need it more --my work life is _plenty_ scheduled for me, but my out of work life is...harder and driftier!)

~Sor

[canyonwalker]

At the moment I don't schedule time in my personal life, though that's because I've unplugged from enough commitments that I rarely have scheduling conflicts anymore. At some point in the past I did keep a calendar of evening engagements & prep tasks, too. My friends who have active children tell me it's indispensable for tracking soccer practice, piano lessons, school events, scout meetings, etc.

[canyonwalker]

I discussed this calendar strategy with a few colleagues today when we were making smalltalk. Both agreed with the technique. One said, "OMG, I just saw 'extra innings' on your calendar today and wondered what that meant!"