Managing calendars, especially executive calendars, can be challenging.
Many people and tasks compete for your time, so you want to make the most of each day. Staying on schedule is crucial. Being late or missing meetings can send the message to clients and employees that they are not valued, which can harm your reputation over time.
At the same time, creating time and space for everything and staying on track can make your life and your work much more manageable.
Here are 13 executive calendar management tips to help you maximize productivity and time management.
1. Prioritizing Calendar Management
The initial step in managing your executive calendar involves prioritizing people and tasks within your business. Consider who you need to spend time with directly and identify meetings or responsibilities that are not worth your time.
The Eisenhower Matrix, named after the well-known former general and president, who stated, "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent," is a useful tool for setting priorities.
The Eisenhower Matrix divides priorities into four segments:
- Urgent and Important: These are priorities only you can handle and need urgent attention. Examples include board meetings or investor calls. These should be at the top of your inbox and on your calendar immediately.
- Important but not urgent: These priorities need your attention, but you can delay them for about a week. For instance, you could schedule a meeting request from a direct report or a check-in with an important customer for a later time.
- Urgent but not important: These are tasks that can be delegated to others. For instance, if you have an executive assistant, you can assign them to handle scheduling meetings, organizing travel, and preparing documents.
- Neither important nor urgent: Avoid these priorities entirely. Save time by decluttering your inbox and calendar. When questioning, "Why am I in this meeting?", simply skip the next one.
It can be helpful to build this matrix and keep it nearby when you're overwhelmed with requests and need to prioritize. You create four quadrants:
- Urgent and important in the top left quadrant
- Important but not urgent in the top right quadrant
- Urgent but not important in the bottom left quadrant
- Neither urgent nor important in the bottom right quadrant
2. Document Your Meeting Preferences
Everyone has their own working style and varies in how much they tolerate meetings. To optimize your time, consider documenting your meeting preferences. Sharing these with your team helps ensure everyone is aligned, especially when you share your calendar to make scheduling easier.
- Times of day: What times of day do you like to meet?
- Meeting duration for diverse types of meetings: Not all meetings need to last an hour. Shorter sessions can save a lot of time.
- Meeting locations: Would you rather meet at restaurants or coffee shops? Do you prefer video calls or face-to-face meetings? Your choice might depend on who you're meeting and the purpose of the meeting.
- Buffer time between meetings: Frequent consecutive meetings can cause executives to fall behind schedule. Moving directly from one call to the next eats into time, so taking a short break between sessions can significantly boost your focus and attentiveness. A buffer of five to 15 minutes between meetings makes a notable difference.
- Restricted times: Scheduling dedicated periods for "deep" work, like strategy and planning, helps you focus on important projects effectively.
- Out-of-office notifications: Some executives are comfortable staying connected when out of the office for work or personal reasons, while others prefer not to. If your calendar shows you're out, clarify whether you'll respond and set clear expectations for your responses.
- Meeting Preparation time: Do you need to set aside time before some meetings to prepare? Add it to your calendar.
3. Calendar More than Meetings
Executive calendar management involves more than just business meetings. Often, it encompasses your entire schedule. Keeping everything in one place, such as a Teams Calendar, helps you stay organized and avoid missing events or double-booking.
Non-meeting tasks that you can add to your calendar include:
- Exercise
- Personal appointments
- Deadlines
- Family commitments
- Networking with colleagues
- Meals
- Time for important tasks
4. Color Code Meetings in Your Calendar
Calendar management can be both visually appealing and workflow-driven. Using color-coding in apps like Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar allows you to quickly see your schedule and easily adjust meetings and commitments when necessary. For instance, since a deadline isn't a meeting, you can instantly recognize your availability during that time. You can organize events by color to improve clarity.
- Type of activity (business, personal, health, deadline, etc.)
- Priority level
- Internal or external
- Onsite or off-site
- Recurring meeting
5. Send Reminders and Confirmations
One of the most effective ways to save time is to send detailed meeting agendas, reminders about upcoming meetings, and confirmation of attendance to attendees. No-shows can be a significant time drain and discouraging, especially when you have to travel to a meeting.
On most calendar platforms, you can set up automated reminders to notify yourself at specified times and quantities. For instance, you might schedule reminders 24 hours before an event and again 15 minutes prior.
It can also help to send a confirmation request at least one day prior to a meeting to ensure all attendees are aware of it.
6. Create Templates for Calendar Invitations and Confirmations
Your life will be much simpler if you create templates for calendar invitations and confirmations. Having a template means you won't have to start from scratch each time you send a confirmation email, and you'll be less likely to forget to include important information.
A confirmation template can consist of:
- A message that says you are looking forward to your meeting.
- The day and time
- Location
- Any phone numbers or video call links
- A request to respond to confirm or change plans
7. Gather Documents for Executive Meetings
Another way to boost your efficiency is to ensure all necessary documents and information are prepared beforehand for the meeting. Use the meeting invitation or confirmation to specify anything attendees need to bring. Meeting documents include:
- Minutes from the previous meetings (if recurring)
- Profiles of the attendees who are unfamiliar to you
- Agendas
- Financial or committee reports
Getting this information during the meeting will waste time and slow you down.
8. Review Your Executive Calendar Daily
Review a summary of tomorrow's schedule at the end of the day.
Reviewing the next day's schedule in the afternoon is recommended because it gives you time to notify people if your plans change and a meeting needs to be rescheduled or canceled.
9. Privacy in Shared Executive Calendars
If you share your executive calendar with others, be cautious about any meetings you prefer to keep confidential. For instance, if you're dealing with loans and other financial transactions, you can be vague about the individuals or firms involved.
When traveling, consider personal security concerns. Do you want others to know about your absences from home and family? At a minimum, ensure everyone who sees your calendar understands your preferences for location details.
Both Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar offer many options for managing your privacy. If you're unsure how to optimize your sharing settings in your calendar apps, a quick Google search is helpful. Most calendars allow you to mark specific meetings as private, so you can share details while keeping them secure. You can also share a version of your calendar where details are never visible, but relevant parties can see when you are busy or available.
You can also create multiple calendars so you can share just the details you want to with others.
10. Delegate Wisely and Kindly
In earlier times, executives had secretaries and receptionists as gatekeepers. These gatekeepers managed calendars and said "no" to requests for an executive's time. If you are the one saying "no," use delegation to help requesters get what they need.
You can do this by:
- Redirecting the person to a more appropriate resource as a starting point
- Offer help connecting them with a more appropriate resource
- Explain how the person will get better results with a more appropriate resource
- Offer support if the person hits roadblocks with the resource you recommend
11. Create Meeting-Free Blocks in Your Calendar
Calendar management is about finding a balance by maintaining a detailed schedule of meetings and intentionally scheduling blocks without meetings.
Research from Atlassian shows that the average employee attends sixty-two meetings a month, with about half of them seen as a waste of time—either because the meeting isn't necessary for the topic or because it takes up more time than it should.
All of this wasted time prevents people from focusing on the deep work that drives their success.
One way to limit this productivity killer is to create meeting-free blocks on your calendar and resolve more conversations asynchronously via email and chat.
Depending on your role, you can adjust this productivity strategy in two ways:
- Determine whether your meeting-free block should have zero meetings or allow ones tied directly to your success, such as prospect presentations if you're a salesperson, while disallowing internal meetings.
- Decide how much time you need for deep work. If you're in a highly collaborative role, one or two mornings a week may be enough to make significant progress on your independent projects. However, if you're a creator, strive for an entire day or two of new meetings to fully focus on your projects.
Once you've decided how much meeting-free time you need to boost your productivity, schedule blocks for focused work and let your close colleagues know.
You'll need to make exceptions if an urgent issue arises and you need to connect with your team to resolve it. These meetings still support your goal of dedicating time to your most important tasks.
12. Schedule Time to Handle New Requests
No matter how carefully you plan your days, unexpected problems and requests can disrupt your productivity. To stay on track even during chaotic days, set aside time on your calendar to handle sudden tasks.
The length of time you block off and the frequency depend on how unpredictable your workload is. If your responsibilities are generally stable, you may only need an hour every two or three days to tackle unexpected tasks.
If addressing urgent issues is a key part of your role, consider reserving two or three hours daily for them. Use any remaining time to advance your projects.
Blocking off time also lets you set expectations with people about when you'll complete their requests, preventing you from holding them back.
13. Hire a Virtual Assistant For Calendar Management
Managing your calendar can seem paradoxical since it demands a lot of time upfront to save time later. However, if you establish efficient processes and habits that help you plan your ideal schedule swiftly, you'll likely end up saving time and enjoy the mental benefits of a well-structured calendar.
However, if you find it hard to stick with this type of time management system, trying to optimize your calendar can be stressful and even reduce your productivity.
Offload complex calendar management to a virtual assistant to yield the benefits without investing time.
Once you specify your preferences for activities such as focus time, meetings, and task batching, they will make sure each appointment is scheduled at the best time and help you avoid double-booking.
A talented executive assistant will be able to manage multiple calendars and to-do lists, allowing you to manage your precious time efficiently.
Read More: The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Assistants
The Value of Executive Calendar Management
Managing your calendar might feel overwhelming, but relying on improvisation isn't an effective approach. Implementing basic organization and standard procedures can significantly boost your productivity and reduce stress.
You will have peace of mind knowing that everything is under control--as much as possible.
If it feels overwhelming, think about outsourcing your executive calendar management. Since 2008, Prialto has supplied virtual executive assistants to U.S. executives, specializing in calendar management and a wide range of administrative duties.
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If you're interested in how a virtual executive assistant can help with your calendar management, click here to learn more.