When is the last time you said to a colleague – sorry I am back-to-back today and felt a sense of overwhelm, while saying that? I have been feeling it, hearing it, observing it, and decided to call it. Microsoft technology is here to help us, not to drain us, so what are we doing wrong? Among many other things that we are learning to do differently in this new way of wfh-work-life-integration, I’d like to suggest that we need to adjust our calendaring habits.
Looking at the image above, which day would you rather have? The back-to-back one on the left, or the one on the right, allowing for micro-moments of rest? Did you know what is it, that the number one tennis player does differently compared to number two? Scientists have observed that it comes down to their ability to actively rest during the micro moments between sets. Why not apply this little piece of wisdom in your and your team’s performance at work?
Do you find yourself chronically 2-3 minutes late for your next meeting, popping into the chat rooms comments like, sorry guys – give me five, just so you can grab a glass of water? When did going to the bathroom, stretching your legs, and taking a few breaths become so tricky to do? These luxuries vanished somewhere between the first covid case and the 24 months that followed on the journey towards working from home. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s keep using technology to not only allow us work from home, but to also stay well and productive.
To improve our wellbeing and the incessant back-to-backs race, my team and I tested quite a few approaches to create some ‘takeadeepbreath-wellness-sanity-bio-grabacuppaoracookie’ (you can take a breath now) breaks that we all know are essential to our productivity and mental health. The above pictured approach proved to work the best – namely changing your calendaring settings, so that all 30 minutes meetings commence at 5 minutes into the half hour and all 60 minutes meetings commence 10 minutes into the hour. Just look at the picture, considering how many times a day we consult our agenda, isn’t it important that the image of itself isn’t stressful and doesn’t look like a battlefield making you feel tight around your chest?
And ‘how exactly do I change these calendaring settings’, I hear you ask. It is as simple as 1, 2, 3. For Microsoft Outlook users, in your Outlook, simply go to File, Options, Calendar and tick ‘Shorten appointments and meetings’ and choose ‘Start Late’, then pick the delayed start that suits you. For Mac users I don’t have a guide, but I am pretty sure there will be an equivalent option. Will you join me in calling it quits on back to backs? It will change your day, every day, I promise. Here is my guide on how to do it.
3 STEPS to put some air into your schedule, so that you can take a breath:
- Set up delayed meeting start in your Outlook. 5 mins for all 30mins meetings, 10 mins for all 60 mins meetings (see instructions above).
- When you receive meeting invitations that make your calendar be back-to-back, replay with ‘Tentative – Propose a New Time’ and request a delayed start by 5 or 10 minutes.
- If you have an EA, ask them to apply steps 1 & 2 for you.
Try it for a couple of days and see if you can feel any difference. Chances are that you wont look back. Now get into a habit of taking a few deep breaths between meetings and watch your and your teams stress reduce and performance soar.
Jokes aside, taking a few deep breaths is the easiest way to reduce stress and increase your creativity and productivity during the day. Use these micro moments of time to create a mindfulness routine and practice some ladder breathing (breathe in on a count of 4 then breathe out on a count of 6, repeat three times). This practice stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system (a fancy way of saying relaxation).
Feeling relaxed is essential to engaging your prefrontal cortex (another fancy word of saying – your smart brain) to problem solve effectively, to come up with creative ideas, and to stay out of your amygdala (the primitive fight and flight brain), which we tend to operate from when stressed. I encourage you to use this simple way of updated calendaring and breathing to change your day. You always have your breath with you and it’s free! Bonus.
Oh, and have I said that our clients love it? Many of our clients in the corporate world we operate in at Avanade suffer from the same back-to-back plague we do and I am yet to meet one who will ask for a longer meeting. When we started to set our meetings with a delayed start on our last project, we observed the fastest behaviour change yet. How do I know this? Our second stand up was accidentally scheduled to start at the bottom of the hour and the client showed up 5mins ‘late’, saying ‘but I thought we are starting five minutes in, and I was grabbing a cup of tea’. She shared, that she already liked the prospect of taking a breath between meetings and not feeling guilty for being late to yet another meeting. Needles to say that guilt is not a constractive emotion when collaborating on outcomes. We reassured the client, that it was an oversight and soon we became her favorite team to deal with. Why? Because we ‘gave her a break’.
To mention other lets-quit-back-to-backs approaches, we found that 15- or 45-mins meetings were too short and scheduling them to finish early didn’t work. The habit of meetings finishing at the bottom or at the top of the hour is just too ingrained in us and meetings scheduled to finish early nearly always run to finish well, at the bottom or top of the hour. On contrary with the move to 25- and 50-minutes meetings with a delayed start, we found that we could still cover content planned and finished as planned. Also, we tend to start on time, as attendees had a chance to take a micro break and do what was needed to recalibrate, refocus and get ready for their next activity.
So, there you go, my Wellbeing Micro Moment for the week. Let me know how you and your teams are going and share your tips! In the meantime we are also looking into the use of Microsoft Viva to help us with our calendars, so watch this space for more.
