Why calendar resets don't work (and what to do instead)
Last year, my company did a calendar reset (deleted all team meetings to start fresh), and that helped for a bit, but now my calendar is back to being a mess again. What do I do?
As a proponent for async-first work, people automatically assume I love calendar resets, but nope. This exact scenario is exactly why I don’t. It’s a huge tease to get a taste of what work is like when you have space to do it, but this space is immediately ripped away because calendar resets do nothing to change bad habits.
The person who only knows how to get anything done in meetings has no new training. The teams with no processes for collaborating async still need calls to work together. And the managers who use meetings to gauge whether work is getting done are now frantic.
Calendar resets are aspirational but not rooted in reality. It’s like when a person who is tired of their mess spends one day just tossing everything. Next month, they’re back to living in a pigsty because it wasn’t the stuff that made the place messy. It was the person and the habits.
There are two key skills to learn when trying to reduce meetings:
How to say no to new requests - This will keep your calendar from growing, but the baseline will remain the same
How to delete existing events - Leads to reduction but needs skill 1 to keep them away
People frequently jump right to skill 2 and then wonder why their calendar is a mess again a month later. You need both skills to maintain a healthy calendar.
It can be tempting to overhaul everything overnight when you’re feeling overwhelmed, but I’d like to encourage you to instead focus on these small steps this week:
Pick a single target - Review your calendar and pick just one bad meeting you have influence over (preferably a recurring meeting). Review this article, identify which problem area the meeting falls into, and choose one of the listed action items to test. Experiment with just one change this week.
Create a meeting framework - Instead of accepting every single meeting invite, have a set of rules to define what to say yes to. Example: I will only accept x meetings per day, during y hours, and only after determining if it is in the best format. Setting this framework prior to being in the moment of receiving an invite is essential. Instead of leaving the decision up to later, make the rules now (If you have less calendar influence, get manager buy-in. This tends to be easier than you think because if you’re drowning in meetings, your manager’s calendar is even more of a dumpster fire).
Pre-write your meeting decline message - Many of us are people pleasers, and it can be hard for us to say no. Don’t make it any more challenging than it already is. Have a short and sweet message pre-written to send when you receive any new invites that don’t meet your new meeting rules. Bonus: Create a keyboard shortcut with the message, so saying no becomes even easier.
Start with just these three items. Keep what works and toss what doesn’t. As with anything, the more you practice, the better habits you’ll build. And this time, when you clear your calendar, it’ll be for good.
