Calendar Spam

Meetings are the calendar spam of organizational life. People create and distribute them, pulling in others and, like viruses, they distract, disable, or cripple the flow of work. Just as with e-mail, there are good meeting requests and good meetings, so we tend to be hopeful about all the ones we get handed, but so often our calendar inboxes just fill up with things that, because they’re scheduled, demand the highest tangible priority (stoppage of all other work), even if, compared to other work, they deserve lower priority. Managers make this worse, because priority goes up artificially whenever the person wanting the meeting signs your check – even if business needs disagree. Calendar spam makes e-mail spam look cute. The only trick I’ve found is to schedule calendar blocks for the daily, ordinary, but really important work that doesn’t ever get scheduled, and mark yourself unavailable at that time. Sorry… I already have a 3:00, and a 4:00 that lasts two hours. Can this be an e-mail? Of course, if you answer to people who believe meetings are what calendar items make them – “show stopper” important – taking precedence over everything – then you might not get away with it. But I’ve witnessed execs doing it all the time – blocking out 4hrs a day or more of unspecified busy time. Why not everyone else? Calendar spam makes e-mail spam look cute – what takes 10-seconds in e-mail takes an hour on your calendar. Schedule meetings with yourself, and use that time to get your work done.