When working with various people, we need to protect our schedule. We planned for something, and we want to stick to the plan as much as possible.

That is particularly true in a remote-first environment, where many other factors can intervene and undermine the plan. For example, family members could try to steer our attention away from more important, or even only planned, things, because they believe what’s on their plate matters more. The same applies to colleagues, customers, or suppliers.

I think we can expect everyone to have a selfish point of view about their “stuff.” It’s also crucial to acknowledge that we cannot expect others to drop what they are doing to help us, unless it’s a true, unpredictable emergency.

All that said, it’ll happen. Over the years, I developed a few techniques to mitigate the effects of others trying to make their emergencies my problems.

First of all, plan. If we don’t have a plan, daily, weekly, monthly, what have you, we’re at the mercy of the wind. Wherever it blows, it’ll drift us, and it becomes very hard to protect ourselves.

Plan for the unplanned by pre-allocating “free” space

The essence here is to assume that disruptions will happen, so that we can prepare ourselves. In this context, I apply a few techniques.

Do not overload your schedule: If the plan is too tight, a grain of sand in the gears will block the engine. If we have back-to-back meetings, a five-minute delay will ripple off and cause everything to fall apart, annoy people, and probably result in an hour-long delay at the end of the day. It’s like traffic on a highway: the more cars, the more likely it is that someone slowing down a bit 10 kilometers ahead of you will bring you to a halt. Leave some time between meetings and planned activities; Ever experienced going to the doctor later in the day or to the hairdresser in Italy, and found out you have to wait because they left no gaps between appointments?

Every day in my calendar, there is at least one “Inbox and ToDos” 15-minute slot: When the time comes, I look at the unplanned. It could be a new email, a review request on a pull request, or a Slack ping. The rule is: if I can get the thing done in 15 minutes, I’ll do it; otherwise, I’ll schedule it. The sender might not be happy with it, and that’s what I want: a conversation to understand why their emergencies should become my problems.

Be explicit: Distinguish what you can move from what you cannot

Picture this: You want to book some time with a colleague. You head to your favorite calendar tool, create a new meeting, and invite them. You switch to the view showing their calendar to find the best slot, but it’s a sea of “busy” slots for the time being. It’s intimidating, and your only option is to reach out to discuss if anything can be moved to fit you in. It could be the CEO calendar, and that’s the way it is, or maybe not.

I used that approach for a while, years ago, and it resulted in too many conversations sucking up too much time compared to the return. At the time, it also served a reasonable purpose. I was unprotected, and I needed to build that protective shield. The method was drastic, but it solved the problem.

Since then, I switched to a different approach. I can group my planning into three buckets:

  1. Meetings with other people;
  2. Things I must work on when scheduled, and I should avoid delaying as much as possible;
  3. Things I should be working on, but I can either move later in the week or even postpone to a later time.

Meetings go on my primary calendar. The second group goes on my calendar, too, usually as focus time. Focus time is handy for that type of meeting because I can set a time slot to automatically decline meeting invitations.

The last group goes on a different calendar, the “Work planning” calendar, visible only to me.

People looking at my calendar will see busy slots from the first two groups and, many times, a decent amount of space to book additional stuff. When an invitation comes in, it goes on the primary calendar, and I reschedule what was on the “Work planning” calendar.

This approach addresses two concerns:

  1. It allows people to schedule because there will be available slots.
  2. It raises a conversation only if they really want a specific slot that I already allocated for something else.

Develop a system to detect how many unplanned things you’re taking on

As I said, every day, I have at least a 15-minute slot marked as “Inbox and ToDos.” Ideally, that should be it; I should be able to keep up with all that’s going on around me in those 75 minutes. Obviously, that’s rarely the case; I don’t live in a bubble with full control.

I do a simple, yet powerful, thing. I count those slots at the end of the week. Whenever I do something unplanned, e.g., review a pull request I wasn’t supposed to, I note it down on my calendar as a new “Inbox and ToDos” slot. At the end of the week, I count all those slots, and sometimes I realize that’s where my time evaporates.

It also tells me when I have the capacity to join another task force.

Develop a system to detect how much you’re drifting from the plan

Postponing things might be a problem. As such, we need to track how frequently that happens to determine its severity. Every Friday, I spend about 30 minutes planning the week after. While doing that, I look at how many things are already on the “Work planning” calendar. In an ideal world, there should be none, which means I postponed nothing. That’s not always the case, and when that happens, I get a sense of how much I’m saying yes to the unplanned. I note that down, and if it happens too frequently, I’ll try to understand why and how to course correct.

Learn to say no or not now

All that is not per se. It surfaces very well where my time goes. It helps in two ways:

  • It alleviates that feeling of “I have no idea what I did, and I feel I did nothing” that comes with doing too many small things scattered all over the place;
  • It tells me that I might not be saying enough nos.

It’s hard, but it’s a skill on its own. Start by having a conversation to help them determine the priority of their request. Most of the time, there is no urgency, and it can be scheduled for a later time. Over time, I also learned to say no; it doesn’t happen frequently, but sometimes it’s your only option.

Conclusion

Everyone might be facing similar problems, and sometimes it’s hard to determine whether what I described is the root cause. They mostly see, as I did, the symptoms, e.g., the productivity disruption, and their strategy, as mine was, could be to put in more hours. But that’s a vicious cycle that can only lead to burnout.

This article presents a different point of view and shares techniques that could help mitigate, if not resolve, many of the issues presented.

Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash