Overbooked schedules have become a workplace status symbol

If you work in a busy office, you’ve no doubt heard some form of the following conversation over the cubicle walls: “Lunch? Sorry, I won’t have a chance to grab a bite at all. I’m actually completely booked for the next few days.”

The irony is that while you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who is happy about an exhausting work schedule, many of us carry an odd sense of pride about having a personal schedule stuffed with back-to-back-to-back meetings.

In the modern world of work, the overbooked calendars have become a professional status symbol that many founders, executives, and employees wear as a badge of honor. For these ultra-occupied individuals, a jam-packed calendar equates to importance. It sends a signal that they are in demand. “I’m sorry I missed your Slack. I’ve been slammed all day” has become a slick way of delivering a slightly different message: I’m a hot commodity. Why aren’t you?

Here’s why overbooked schedules have become a workplace status symbol

Overbooked calendars are a false flex

I would argue that an overstuffed calendar isn’t necessarily a reflection of significance or stature but could be a sign of something else entirely. It may indicate poor planning or that you’re on the verge of burnout. 

Or perhaps an overbooked schedule is a projection of industriousness that’s actually just someone attempting to look busy. Sometimes, a crammed callendar can even be an excuse. Most of us don’t like answering emails, having tough face-to-faces, or digging into a mountain of monotonous work, right? Well, a flush calendar makes for a good strategy to avoid tackling the stuff that actually needs to get done—in the short term, anyway. But kicking the can down the road to make today’s work tomorrow’s problem is the kind of “efficiency” no business should want any part of.

And when it comes to addressing this unhealthy business culture, there’s a workplace saying that applies here: Technology works great, until it doesn’t. Digital calendars that can be accessed and updated across all our devices and shared with colleagues, and calendar tools that deliver alerts and notifications for meetings and key events that can’t be missed often play a vital role in our workday. But, as we’ve seen since the onset of the pandemic, which created new or expanded dimensions of remote and hybrid work, the bloat of morning-to-dusk meetings and the mindset of filling every nook and cranny of a calendar like a Tetris board isn’t actually helping your personal productivity or your teams’ bottom line. If anything, it’s hurting it.

Protecting your calendar

What we’re talking about, then, isn’t really the value of meetings or calendar tools but something more fundamental: the importance of prioritizing proper time management. It’s something that often gets paid lip service in the workplace, but for as much as it gets discussed in the office, very few people understand what it really means, let alone are effective in seeing it through.

As it stands, our current calendar culture is the gold standard of office time management. How many times have you heard a busy co-worker or manager say, “Go ahead and put some time on my calendar.” Our default problem-solving mode has become a thoughtless knee-jerk, putting the onus on others, funneling every issue into a 30-minute block and a donut-filled conference room, and keeping it moving. 

The trouble, of course, is that every meeting is a schedule-stunter and a potential time-suck—for everyone involved. It means that everyone in that room, at the top of the hour, is required to stop whatever potentially productive work activity they were engrossed in, shift gears, take a walk, or set up their Zoom and then wait. Back-to-back meetings lead to wasted time. Inevitably, someone will have to pop into the restroom, or take a phone call they can’t miss, or go long in another meeting. 

To make matters worse, many meetings are not productive. More often than not the answer to the question, “Could this have been an email?” is “yes.”

What’s the best response to calendar culture?

The larger question each individual needs to ask of themselves is whether stacking their calendar is the most effective use of time. In certain cases, depending on a worker’s role or the needs of the company, a full calendar may be necessary—and even a legitimate revenue driver. In others, workers may simply be overbooking for the sake of being overbooked.

There are proven strategies to combat this sort of creep, including office efficiency assessments that may come in the form of worker surveys, manager reviews, and third-party appraisals. No one likes a hall monitor or the calendar police lurking over their shoulder all day at work. Then again, none of us like having our time wasted by needless meetings or having our workdays routinely extended by thoughts that, yes, could have been expressed in an email.

So, it’s time to crack down on calendar culture, for the benefit of all of us. Because a culture that’s busy just for the sake of being busy is no way to run an efficient organization. When meetings are proposed, ask yourself, “Is this a productive use of my time, and more importantly, my team’s time? Does this meeting align with what we, as a company, are strategizing towards? Are the objectives, discussion points, participant expectations and action items expressly clear to the attendees?”

If the answers are “yes,” then go for it; it sounds like this meeting would have a productive outcome. If not, scrutinize if the meeting is worthwhile, because the sooner we get those needless meetings wiped from our schedule, the sooner we can dive into that real work that needs to be done.