Availability can be death to productivity. In big companies, my clients often use shared calendars that give other people access to see where they have “free time” to schedule meetings. It’s not uncommon for people to find themselves booked in meetings all day and unable to get to their own work until 5:00 PM. In smaller operations, or for self-employed people, there’s often a sense that they have to be available to respond to anything and everything. As a result, their agenda for the day, week or month can get hijacked by other people’s demands or by their own flexibility and lack of structure.
Your calendar can be one of your best productivity tools, but you have to defend it.
1. Literally block off time – real minutes or hours – for goals, projects and tasks. Lots of people work from lists that just get longer and longer because they never block off the time it takes to DO things. Instead, they find their days get eaten up with other people’s agendas. When you set your work plan, literally block off the time in your calendar to do the work.
2. Be realistic about your time. What some people think is a day’s work is more like 18 hours of work. When my clients get real about using their calendars, they also get real about what they can accomplish in a day. As a result they know their capacity. They know what they can take on. And they get real about having to delegate, defer or dump something in order to take on something new.
3. Say no. People who have moved up the ladder often feel like they got there by saying yes to people. But at a certain point, that doesn’t scale. Defending your calendar, your productivity and ultimately your value now requires the word NO. If someone books a meeting into a slot in your calendar when you need to do something else, decline the meeting. If someone pops by or calls you, it’s OK to say “No, I can’t fit in a meeting today,” or “No, I don’t have a minute right now.” Defend your agenda and your time. If you don’t, no one else will.
4. Engage your team in your defense strategy. If you have an assistant scheduling appointments for you, make sure he or she knows not to over book you. Talk to your team about using their calendars to schedule work time, not just meeting times – you might need to set team rules about not scheduling meetings first thing, or always leaving an hour between meetings. You know what’s reasonable for you and your team, the point is, boundaries are important. If people (below and above you) think they can have your attention any time they want, they’ll take it. If they understand that you are setting boundaries to improve performance, they’ll respect that and get on board – especially when they start seeing the results.
3 things high performing managers must block time for in their calendars – and defend!
1. One on One’s with your team
2. White space to think creatively and strategize for big decisions
3. Exercise, lunch and regular renewal breaks – you need to protect the habit of eating properly and managing your energy.
ACTION: Take a quick look at your calendar for the week and ask yourself this: “who’s agenda is it serving?” If your calendar isn’t serving you, you need to manage it. If you need help, give me a call.
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