I do this and also take advantage of the chance to take a conference room for an hour or two, vs. open plan desk with my back to a room full of people.
I get probably 5x more done per minute in the conference room.
Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
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Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#12for those of us who don't want to connect our calendar right off the bat, what are some example meetings this creates?
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#13for those of us who don't want to connect our calendar right off the bat, what are some example meetings this creates?
It adds important things like: "Review OKRs", "Planning sync", etc.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xizuaap0lbjt0k/Screenshot%202016-...
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#14Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#15Adding fake meetings is an easy and effective thing to do. Honestly can't see what value a service adds here
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#16I picked up the habit of doing this manually a couple years ago, when my meeting load mushroomed following a reorg. I also started getting assertive about declining meetings if I thought they were asking for too much time. Too many folks were in the habit of reflexively blocking out a full hour for a decision that could be made in 15 minutes plus a briefing email that everyone could be expected to read ahead of time.…
+10 to event you said bit I have a couple more tips. 1) If it's not clear what the meeting is for and there's no agenda - just decline it. 2) If there are too many people invited - say no. So often there's really only about 1.5 people on the room who you really need.
> 1) If it's not clear what the meeting is for and there's no agenda - just decline it.
This is probably the best advice. Meetings should only be about hashing out the final details that might have had some contention. Start all conversations on email/slack and only meet when it becomes needed.
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#17A technique I learned years ago once Outlook starting broadcasting availability is the notion of "defensive scheduling". Basically schedule work time the same as you treat any other meeting. If a meeting request comes in and it conflicts with your previously scheduled work time? Decline.
I've used it pretty successfully, but it requires a little bit of discipline to make sure you have scheduled yourself out a few weeks in advance and that you don't start accepting meetings during that time.
(note: some people will figure out what you're doing when you have 6 hour blocks of time every Thursday. Schedule lots of smaller 30minute and 1hour meetings and people trying to invade your calendar won't know the difference)
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#18How toxic is the work place that you can't block out time for Actually Working on your calendar?
It gets pretty crazy when you move into middle/upper management and your day gets consumed by meetings with teams waiting for you to make a decisive decision about some minor point of conflict.
It gets worse the more people end up under your hierarchy and delegation becomes a major priority. But then your life is consumed by synchronization meetings so you know what your delegates have been doing on your behalf and can answer for them/find connections and opportunities across delegates.
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#19How toxic is the work place that you can't block out time for Actually Working on your calendar?
Sadly, working on your calendar is non-capitalizable, so you are frowned upon for doing it on company time.
Re: Fake Meetings for People with Too Many Real Meetings
#20I used to block off every 9AM-10AM, 4PM-5PM and 1PM-2PM slot as busy slots. If someone really needed to have a meeting at one of those times they could ask me. Because often, those were the only slots the 10 people in the meeting all had open in the immediate future so people would then schedule meetings at those times. I grew tired of 4PM-5PM meetings which extended to 5:30PM, 6PM etc.