Getting out of meetings and into focused work

Ami Vora

Do you ever open up your calendar in the morning and sadly realize that you’ll spend your whole day in back-to-back meetings, with zero time to create or think?  This is one of my least favorite feelings — and if I feel it a few weeks in a row, it’s time to change something.  

One key trick is to be extra intentional about what meetings I join.

Sure, every meeting looks like just 30 minutes on a calendar. But the real costs are the preparation, context-switching, and Swiss-cheesing of my calendar so my dedicated thinking time has to wait until 5pm — or worse, after my kids’ bedtime. That takes a toll fast.