Welcome to Manager Tools. Today's topic, calendar management details. Chapter 1, Short and Free Time. Here we go. Mark today you're going to talk to us about how to improve our effectiveness by eliminating

long open periods from our calendar and God knows...

I'm guilty of this.

Yeah, I think I know a lot of people who do.

They look at their calendar.

In fact, I look at their calendars with them and they

look at that afternoon there's nothing in it I'll get so much done yeah we'll get so much

done exactly the opposite right there's no evidence that the fact is long periods of unscheduled time are

antithetical to effectiveness and we need to manage our calendars differently.

So five points for those of you who think I'm long-winded this cast is going to be long-winded after a fashion even though you can listen for the next three minutes and know what we need to tell you which is is, first of all, contiguous unscheduled time, which I'm trying to avoid

calling free because it's not free.

It looks good.

It makes you feel good.

Wow, as Mike says, I'm going to get a lot done. In fact, that's not true.

In fact, we're going to recommend don't schedule your days with eyes towards blocks of free time.

Don't do it. Don't cram things back to back to back or try to keep

big swaths open. It doesn't work. First of all, if you see quote free unquote time

schedule it with priorities and whatever you do don't move things just to get more

contiguous unscheduled time. It's bad and then this is a final point and it's overkill. You guys know this already, but I'll say it again.

Please, whatever you do during those long swaths of contiguous unscheduled time, don't do email during it.

We have casts for that separately, but I think that's what a lot of people do Mike is they think oh I can get a lot of email done.

Look long periods of unscheduled time make us sloppy guys. That's what the data show working with thousands of

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