Learning to say no on a calendar

Open your calendar and count the blocks nobody else controls. For most knowledge workers it is fewer than four hours a week. The rest belongs to meetings, calls and reviews booked by others.

A consultant I interviewed teaches clients to treat open time as a budget line. She asks them to protect two afternoons a week by marking them as busy, with a note saying 'deep work' for anyone who asks.

Boundaries are social

The trick is not the software. It is the first conversation in which you decline a meeting and nothing bad happens. After that, colleagues begin to book around you, and then, quietly, around each other.