“Let’s start with the premise that you have a 40 hour week. (If you just started crying you need a new job.) That’s 40 hours of time to do your job. Now look at your calendar. If your job is to spend a very large part of those 40 hours in meetings scheduled for you by other people then you’re fine. If your job is to produce things such as code, comps, analyses, flow documents, etc., then why isn’t the time to do that on your calendar?
People rarely schedule working time. And when they do it’s viewed as second-tier time. It’s interruptible. Meetings trump working time. Why? And why so often are the same people who assign deadlines the same ones reassigning all of your time? Crazymaking. They should be securing work time for you and protecting it fiercely.”
If you’re a producer, whether that is literally making something with your hands or designing systems so other people can make stuff, it’s so important to have large uninterrupted periods of time. It often takes a while to get into flow, but once you do you can stay there for a long time. If you’re interrupted, it can take even longer to get back into flow.
“The problem with calendars is that they are additive rather than subtractive. They approach your time as something to add to rather than subtract from. Adding a meeting is innocuous. You’re acting on a calendar. A calendar isn’t a person. It isn’t even a thing. It’s an abstraction. But subtracting an hour from the life of another human being isn’t to be taken lightly. It’s almost violent. It’s certainly invasive. Shared calendars are vessels you fill by taking things away from other people.”
This is why I strongly suggest being mindful of the time you take from people, and why I schedule in my focus time on my calendar. I’m to the point where my whole Wednesday is blocked out for focus, and in turn it is almost always the most productive day I have all week.
If anything give it a go for a few weeks, and see how you go.
Source: The Chokehold of Calendars