Calendar Design

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: Calendar design, published on 20th April 2026.

When you look ahead at your calendar for the next few days, or at the start of a new week, what emotion do you feel? Do you feel a sense of excitement? Do you feel energised when you look at your calendar, or do you feel something closer to dread?

Whether your calendar feels packed, fragmented, or reactive, when that's the case it can really feel like your week is happening to you before it's even begun.

Today I want to talk about calendar architecture, and why it might be one of the most important leadership tools you can have.

Two listener questions

The reason I wanted to talk about this topic is because I've had two listener questions come in recently, in close succession, that capture some of the challenges people experience with their calendars.

The first came from a listener who said: I find myself with about 30 to 40 minutes between meetings, and instead of using that time to get through the tasks I know I need to do, I end up going down a rabbit hole looking at interesting things in my industry - articles, ideas, things I just want to geek out on. But before I know it, the time has gone and my tasks haven't moved forward, and I end up feeling distracted and unproductive. Why does this happen and what can I do about it?

The first thing I want to say to this listener is that I actually think this is great. I have some clients who don't feel that curiosity about their industry at all. The fact that you want to use free time to dive into ideas and explore is a really good sign that you are in a field that matters to you and excites you.

The second thing is that this is not useless work. It sounds like very valuable work - it's just not happening at the right time. If you have 45 minutes between meetings, that might not be the time to tackle a cognitively demanding project. Your brain might already be a little tired and needing a break, and there is nothing wrong with using that time for some intentional industry research and curiosity. We don't want you to lose the passion for your field or feel guilty about it.

This is not about stamping out the urge to go down rabbit holes in your area of expertise. It's about making sure we have protected some time for the important tasks that would otherwise nag at you. And that's something we're going to talk about today.

The second listener wrote about something slightly different. She said: you talk about designing lives and work that we're excited to wake up to, but when I look at my calendar I feel a genuine sense of dread because it's so packed. I like my work, but the schedule feels very constricting. What can I do about this?

This question really got me. It was that tension between liking your work but feeling hemmed in because it gets so busy. I think we've all had weeks where the calendar is more than we would like it to be. That doesn't mean everything has gone wrong - it's sometimes just a function of all the different factors you are managing as part of your work, and sometimes they all come together at once.

On the other hand, if this is what every single week is starting to feel like, that's the signal that we want to start making some structural changes.

To this listener - please don't worry. There are small things we can do that will really move the dial. Today I'm going to give you some ideas around that, broken into three different areas of calendar architecture.

The first mindset shift

We are not here to serve our calendars. Our calendars are here to serve us.

If you look at your calendar and it is not supporting your goals and objectives, something in the architecture needs to change. I know what your first reaction will be - I'm not my own boss, I can't just change everything. But we're not talking about overhauling everything. We're talking about finding a few structural levers that can make a big difference.

The three parts of your calendar

When I sit down with clients and we analyse their calendar, what we typically see is that it breaks into roughly three parts.

The first chunk is genuinely fixed. Board meetings, leadership meetings, management meetings, scheduled client commitments. These are meetings somebody else has scheduled, typically somebody more senior, and they just need to attend. You don't have control over that portion.

The second third is meetings that are actually within your control - team meetings, one-to-ones, project discussions, cross-team collaboration meetings. You might be able to shorten those, move them, change their frequency, or decide whether you need to attend the whole thing.

The third part is empty space. When clients realise they actually have a reasonable amount of empty space - it's just dotted and spread out across the calendar - they find it quite liberating. Typically it is about a third of the calendar.

So the question becomes: how are we designing these three layers?

Protected time - your real gold

We start with protected time. Is that empty space happening in clean chunks, or is it scattered about in 30 to 45 minute increments because meetings haven't been scheduled in close succession where possible?

This is where you do your deep work and strategic work. This is your real gold. I used to call this podcast The Golden Hour because the biggest changes I saw in my clients were when they were able to implement strategic time every day, or at least a certain number of times a week. Everything else good just seemed to follow as a knock-on effect.

I typically ask my clients: which part of your week is least likely to get derailed by a last-minute request or meeting? Often this is early in the morning, early in the week, and sometimes early on a Friday as well. These slots need to be clearly labelled and protected fiercely - because otherwise we know what happens to unprotected calendar space. People love to fill it up.

Designed interaction - meetings within your control

The second part is what I call designed interaction. These are the meetings that are within your control.

I am not one of those time management people who has never set foot inside a real organisation. I grew up inside organisations. I know how important meetings are. I actually call meetings the vehicle of organisational life - they are the way you interact with people, connect with people, and they are so important. But they might need a restructure.

If you have any control over a Monday morning meeting, I would encourage you to move it. Monday morning meetings are a bit like being back at school - as if everybody needs to be gathered together to figure out what they're doing for the whole week. I have never heard anything good about Monday morning meetings for highly accountable high achievers. Monday morning is your best energy of the week. That is prime time for protected work, getting ahead of your week, doing the strategic stuff. If you have any influence over it, move those meetings to later in the week, or at the very least later in the day. Even moving it to 11am or noon would make a difference.

Of course there are exceptions. Some of my social work clients have essential Monday morning meetings because things have happened over the weekend that concern children - it's core to the way their work operates. So there will always be exceptions, and you just need to think about which periods of time you can protect.

The other thing I see a lot with senior clients is a high number of fortnightly one-to-ones repeated throughout the month. One thing that has worked well is reducing the frequency of those and replacing some of them with office hours - more frequent but shorter, so that reactive stuff can happen within a 24 to 48 hour window. I also have a video on YouTube about how to get the most out of your one-to-one meetings.

Fixed meetings - career gold

The third part of the calendar is the fixed meetings. Not only are these not within your control, but they are where you want to have high-impact presence - board meetings, senior leadership team meetings, management meetings. These are important. I call these career gold. This is where your presence and visibility really matters.

Whilst you can't move those meetings, you can be really strategic about how you participate. You can think about whether you need to be there for the whole meeting or just the portion that is relevant to your work. This is also useful if you are trying to empower your team - you can allow some time at the beginning or end of the meeting to connect with them, give your input, and make sure nothing falls through the gaps.

The obliger in many of my clients makes them feel they need to sit through the whole meeting. Let's not assume that is always necessary.

When people start seeing us being efficient with our time, they normally see the benefits and respect it. You are not likely to be seen as a slacker because you have left a meeting early when you have other big priorities to focus on.

This is also where showing up intentionally really matters. When you've spent time tidying up your calendar and owning it more, showing up to these fixed meetings becomes something you can devote more thought and intention to - making sure you are contributing in the way that feels right for you and being seen at the level of leadership you want to be perceived at.

Bringing it all together

So I've given you three different chunks of your calendar to consider: protected time for deep and strategic work, designed interaction for the meetings within your control, and fixed meetings where you want to show up with real presence and intention.

Hopefully that's given you some ideas for taking more control of your calendar. If you manage to put any of these into practice, do let me know - I love hearing how these work for you.

This all sits within the third pillar of my Refreshing Leadership framework - the pillar I often call energetics. It's where I help people design their ideal week and their ideal calendar, and we talk specifically about productivity inside organisations so that you are energised and strategic internally, but also so that you get to live the life you want outside of work. I will link to that programme in the show notes.

If you know somebody who finds their calendar a little overwhelming and isn't sure where to start, please send them this episode. It might be a real relief for them to know there are proven ways to address this.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.