Low stakes question here for fellow office workers… How do you feel about the practice of blocking chunks of your calendar off to appear busy, not for meetings, but for your own focus time?
I work hybrid and my job is pretty detail-oriented. I’ve been finding myself very busy lately. I get interrupted with pings and “drive-bys,” and I really want to reduce this so I can focus and be more productive and less stressed about my never-ending To Do list.
Apparently some people will just block busy time on their calendars so they don’t get scheduled for meetings, or alternatively they mark themselves busy or DnD on Teams. Honestly never occurred to me to do this until I heard others mention it. 😆
I think it could be super helpful for me to block like half of every day as busy for focused work, but I’m struggling a little because it feels… dishonest?
So tell me, do you think it’s dishonest? Do you do it? Should I stop overthinking this? Should I wear giant can headphones when I’m in the office and practice my rbf so people leave me alone? 🤭
Comments
I personally don’t think it’s dishonest.
You need time to actually get stuff done and you can’t get stuff done if you’re in meetings 9 hrs a day / 5 days a week.
(I used 9 instead of 8 bc some people like to schedule meetings during lunch time. Those people can F right off. I block time in my calendar for lunch, too 😆)
In Zoom /Teams, I will also put in a status message (e.g. [topic/task]. Responses may be delayed”) so people don’t expect answers right away.
If someone asks if I have time and I actually can delay those tasks I have blocked time for, I tell them my schedule is flexible between whatever time.
I have to do this at work or I wouldn’t be able to get my job done. I’m a people manager but I also own my own product so I do exactly what all my reports do, plus I manage them. The amount of meetings I have is outrageous. I block multiple hours per week on my calendar so I can do actual tasks. And I do not feel dishonest or bad about it.
Edit: I look at it this way – it’s not dishonest because I am truly busy at that time. If I don’t do my tasks at that time, I will have to work late some other day. In order to do my job effectively, I have to time block.
I do it all the time and it’s not about “appearing” busy, because I am actually busy trying to focus on a particular task during those hours. I feel like it’s a fairly common practice and one that’s never occurred to me to be dishonest unless the person in question is just using that time to goof off… but fuck, even so, who even cares if they need to block time off for goofing off so long as they respond to communications in a generally timely manner and get all of their work done to a reasonable standard?
Just block the time off, OP. You’re good!
That works for me when I’m working at home. The days I’m in the office unfortunately not so much. We have open seating so I’m constantly being interrupted by my coworkers. I’ll usually go to a different floor and put myself on DND if I really need to focus.
That’s not faking anything. That’s proper time management.
I used to have “Daily Standup Meeting” on my calendar at 9am so no one would schedule a meeting with me before I was even in the building.
It’s worth a try. However, changing other people’s work habits is tough. I get instant messages from people while attending meetings all day long. My status auto changes to Busy in a call, so I’m sure if I was “fake busy” the same thing would happen.
Another thing you can try is leaving people on unread – don’t immediately read and respond to them just because they sent you a message.
I hear you though – the mental cost of interruptions is real!
I manage calendars for huh level employees and all of them block out “focus time.”
I do this all the time. I have to focus on RFPs so I block my calendar. It’s boundaries.
I have a coworker who does this… except he blocks out noon to 5 pm every. single. day.
This forces me to ignore his blocked out time and just schedule on top of it when I’m booking meetings because it’s impossible to find time on 5+ people’s calendars when one of them is “unavailable” for half of every day.
Then he calls me complaining because he actually had another meeting at the same timeslot I booked… which I could’ve seen if he was just using his calendar right. Ugh, it’s annoying.
All this to say… do this in moderation.
I have to or I’ll never get anything done. I have the first hour of every morning blocked off, an hour for lunch, and then I block off my two remote days so I don’t take appointments or have meetings. If someone on my team needs me they can teams me but I don’t take student meetings or other meetings on those days so I can do other work that needs to be done.