“Blue castle! Defend your barrier!”

There’s an old Atari game, Rampart, in which you built a castle for defense and then another player castle attempts to break down your walls. Build wisely, attack strategically, you win. But the key to Rampart is a wise defense.

Your calendar is no different. But do you protect it strategically?

When the SJVCEO took our January rest we didn’t really rest. We spent a lot of the month in reflection and planning so we could be successful—in whatever success meant to each of us and our values. One activity was to review our calendars. 

I had pinpointed my own looming burnout to feeling like I wasn’t actually working. I felt like I was always in meetings. And with travel back in full swing the combination of in-person and on-line demands on my time was too much. 

As an exercise we each made a list of every reoccurring meeting we had on our calendars. Then we noted the time allotted to each. The results were staggering. For Sam, Kelsey, and Rochelle they were averaging 40 hours a month in regular, reoccurring meetings. I was at 82 hours. 

That’s two full weeks of reoccurring meetings I was expected to be a part of. 

Two weeks.

That doesn’t include one-off meetings that would pop up as part of normal business. Or travel.

We realized, amongst the four of us, about 20 hours were meetings we were all participating in outside of our own organization. This wasn’t only inefficient; it was ridiculously redundant! 

Our first action step was to identify who actually belonged in those meetings and the other three deleted them from their calendars. We set processes in place for making sure the non-participating team members received any pertinent information or action items. We built it in to our own team check-ins. 

The second action was to delete meetings we were invited to, but either didn’t regularly participate in or kept as place holders because we hoped to attend if time allowed. This was a little bit more difficult because as we’ve discussed, we’re a team of people pleasers and we felt by declining the invitation we would be letting someone down. But this is where creating a “culture for no” came in. We talked through each indecision point and reminded each other of our own goals and values. “Does this help you in your growth?” 

I want to underscore the importance of this step because I was a chronic “maybe” respondent. But the visual clutter of my calendar was overwhelming not just for me, but my team. If they needed 15 minutes of my time, they couldn’t easily find it. If my kid had an event at school or a doctor’s appointment I was overwhelmed with guilt trying to make a schedule work. I didn’t need to participate in those maybes but looking at 82 hours of blocked time made me think I had no time. 

Through our work we often survey our program participants, and we see year after year that time is anyone’s greatest commodity. We’ve designed our programs to address that, to relieve pain points, to make a pathway to success. But we weren’t doing that for ourselves. We had to address that gap.

The final step in our regaining time is ongoing. Every week we have to defend our calendars to each other. This happens at our weekly team meetings (which are sacred and integral to success for all of us). We review the upcoming week and honestly ask, “do you need to be there, do you want to be there, or do you feel obligated to be there?” The obligatory ones fall off pretty easily. The others are more subjective. Because a large part this has to be personal. I can’t dictate to our team what they should and shouldn’t find value in, but I absolutely should support them in what they want to achieve, so long as they’re being healthy about it. 

We’re not alone in this calendar defense. At Morning Brew they celebrate something they call, “Calentine’s Day”. On February 15 their team ruthlessly culls their calendars. They shed the weight of the unnecessary obligations so they can do their actual work. 

Scroll LinkedIn for more than a few minutes and you’re sure to come across businesses that set limits on the time a meeting can last, a push to standing meetings, or deleting meetings that clearly could be emails. A calendar is very personal and organization specific thing, so there’s no one size fits all approach. The point is you need an approach.

So I encourage you to spend some time in calendar reflection. Assess those blocks against your own goals and values and be ruthless in your declines! 

Above all else, defend your time!