A week without meetings, and what it did to my calendar

In February I did something I had been putting off for a year. I canceled every recurring meeting on my calendar for one week, told everyone why, and waited to see what broke.

Almost nothing did. That turned out to be the interesting part.

What happened to the time

I expected a week of deep work. What I got, at first, was a strange restlessness. By Tuesday I had answered every email, cleaned up three documents and reorganized a folder nobody uses. Without meetings to push against, I had to decide what mattered on my own, and I was out of practice.

By Wednesday it settled. I wrote for four hours in one sitting for the first time in months. I finished a piece of analysis I had been carrying around since January. I took a walk in the middle of the day and came back with the idea for this issue.

What I missed

Two meetings, it turned out, were doing real work. A weekly call with a researcher I collaborate with was where most of our ideas came from. And a short Friday check-in with my editor was the only reason the letter stayed on schedule.

Everything else could have been a message. Most of it already was, which is why nobody noticed.

A meeting that nobody misses was never really happening.

What I kept

When the week ended, I rebuilt the calendar from zero instead of restoring it. Three rules came out of it:

• Every recurring meeting needs a reason I can write in one sentence, and it gets reviewed every quarter.

• Mornings stay empty until eleven. That is where the writing happens.

• If an update can be read, it is sent, not presented.

My calendar has about half the meetings it had in January. I do not think I am doing less. I think I can finally see what I am doing.