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👏 Today, in 5 Minutes or Less, you’ll Learn

If endless meetings drain your creative power, it's time for a mindset shift. Here's a guide to defensive calendaring: Learn how to audit your calendar and optimize your impact.

🧐 Did You Know?

Research by Atlassian indicates that employees spend an average of 62 hours monthly in meetings, of which they gauge 31 hours are reported as being unproductive. That's a staggering $37 billion salary cost of unnecessary meetings for U.S. businesses. 

It’s a Shock

Case Study: Me

I thrive on leading creative teams in a fast-paced, rapid-growth company, but this was meeting madness starting at 7:30 a.m. with a relentless barrage that ceased only with the bus ride home. Most days, lunch was a raid on the vending machine's dwindling supply of yogurt or mozzarella sticks. During my first month, I was a blur of motion: interviews, updates, presentations, 1:1s, product reviews, and learning and development meetings. By Friday, any memory of Monday's meetings was long gone. 

My assistant's calendar was also full, supporting three executives. She had turned my calendar into a minefield of meetings, accepting everyone who wanted to meet with me.

After a month on the job, it was obvious that my peers in product management and engineering were making strategic decisions for design, research, and content strategy, which I led. My team needed to be a partner, not a servant, in the business, but with my calendar already full, how could I make the time to listen, learn, align, and execute on turning this relationship around?

The Turning Point - Defensive Calendaring

To find the space on my calendar and execute this strategy, my assistant suggested we inventory all my meetings and meet weekly to align my priorities. Here’s a version of the defensive calendaring spreadsheet we used to do this.

We first prioritized urgent and essential meetings with cross-functional peers. Then, we prioritized essential and important meetings (one-on-ones). Next, we used these defensive calendaring questions to optimize my time.

🤑 How to Apply Defensive Calendaring

Decide which meetings are critical to your strategic goals, set them up, and prioritize them. Then, filter everything else by these questions.

Meetings you will delegate

• Who is a trusted team member you can delegate to, helping their development and freeing up your time?

Meetings you will shorten the length of time 

• Research shows that the average meeting duration is 31 to 60 minutes. In reality, the average attention span is just 10-18 minutes. Do you have meetings that could be just as effective if they were shorter?

Meetings you will cancel 

• Tip: Have an email you can reuse to say" No politely. "I value this topic, but my calendar is full. Can we explore other ways I can help?"

Meetings you will reduce the frequency of

• Can you reduce the frequency of repeat meetings?

Could you push back on ad-hoc meetings? 

• Tip: Have an email you can reuse to push back on last-minute invites. “I'm open to discussing this further. Would it be helpful to have a quick agenda beforehand so I can best prepare? Let me know if someone else is a better fit for the meeting, and I'll gladly connect you with the right person.” 

💥 The Short Of It

We're driven and ambitious and want to contribute. However, an overcrowded schedule can stifle creativity, derail focus, and hinder career growth.

Many leaders fall into the trap of equating a packed calendar with success. Your success is independent of how full your calendar is; it depends on how you level up your relationships and expand your sphere of influence. 

Using defensive calendaring allowed me to create the time to get to know my cross-functional peers and build smoother collaborations, bringing my team into the design process early – a huge win! 

Meeting madness can change, but it starts with you. You can take the first step today: audit your calendar to see whether it's serving your highest goals as a leader. If not,  it's time for a defensive calendaring revolution. 

That’s it for this week!

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With ❤️ from Sally

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