The year 2026 is just around the corner, and many people are claiming to be throwing out the old and embracing the new. One of the constant targets of many people’s decluttering efforts and ire is their work calendar.
Experts told CNBC Make It how to polish up your calendar for the year ahead.
Manage meetings
One of the causes of anxiety in many people’s calendars is having too many meetings.
Laura Vanderkam, author of several books on time management and productivity, says you should reevaluate each meeting, especially as we head into the new year. She points out that some recurring meetings have outlived their usefulness because canceling a meeting is often more difficult than creating one.
You can also combine recurring meetings with the same participants or shorten meetings without eliminating them completely, she says.
Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of several books on focus and productivity, says office hours allow non-urgent questions to be asked all at once, eliminating the need for everyone involved to play a constant “message ping-pong game” throughout the day.
Newport also advocates for what he calls “organizing sessions” in the workplace, where teams come together to complete a large number of tasks at once. These meetings require team members to create a shared document and add non-urgent things that need to be discussed throughout the week. In this meeting, we go through them line by line and decide the next steps for each task.
Block your time wisely
Another helpful addition to your work calendar might be to block out time to free up time for deep work or tasks that require the most cognitive ability, Newport says.
Aim for at least 60 to 90 minutes of focused work without checking your inbox or other notifications.
“Most knowledge workers simply check once every 10 minutes or less, meaning they’re never in a state where they’re actually doing deep work,” he says, noting the constant influx of emails, Slack messages, and other notifications in modern work and life. “The real productivity poison in knowledge work is these kinds of context changes.”
In addition to marking deep work blocks on your calendar, you can also block time that you want to reserve for small tasks or that would otherwise be suitable for meetings, so you can treat that time as unavailable.
Just like constantly checking for notifications, allowing others to freely schedule meetings during free time on your calendar can create “severe schedule fragmentation,” meaning you may not have enough time to actually get work done, he said. Another time management approach suggested by Newport is to schedule the same amount of time for each meeting on your calendar to be devoted to independent work elsewhere.
Incorporate a “mini-audit” into your schedule
Calendar audits don’t have to wait until the end of the year, and in fact, they shouldn’t, says Vanderkam. She advises doing a “mini-audit” of your calendar every Friday to plan for the coming week.
Think about what you want to finish by next Friday, decide what steps you need to take to achieve it, and pencil in time accordingly. By looking ahead, you’ll have more flexibility to plan your busy days without being pressed for last-minute time.
“Fifteen minutes could buy you two hours for next week,” Vanderkam says. “The time you spend planning will likely pay off in terms of having a better day.”
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