If you’re frequently double-booked for meetings or find yourself rescheduling appointments on the fly, it may help to set a recurring daily appointment to review your next day’s schedule. This allows you to reschedule meetings with more than a few hours’ (or a few minutes’) notice. It also reminds you of anything you need to do to prepare for a meeting (including allowing enough time to get there!) To make this technique more effective:
- Create the appointment as a calendar event instead of a task to increase the likelihood that you’ll get it done.
- Use your judgment about setting the time to show as “Free” or “Busy” on your calendar, and experiment with different times of day. For a long time I had my “daily review meeting” set to 4:30. When a meeting landed on my calendar at 4:30, I’d often skip my daily review. This almost always had a negative impact on the next day.
- Schedule the meeting during working hours to make certain you get it done without compromising your work-life balance.