Hey there, Quick reminder: I'm hosting a remote work Q&A event to answer all your questions live tomorrow, Wed, Sep 25th! Register for free here and join me. Can't wait to chat!
Now, back to our Q&A series, where I answer popular remote work questions, explain why common advice doesn’t work, and share what I recommend instead. Reply to this email if you have a question you'd like me to cover next! TLDR below 👇 | Read this on the web | Subscribe Last year, my company did a calendar reset (deleted all team meetings to start fresh), and that helped for a bit, but now my calendar is back to being a mess again. What do I do? As a proponent for async-first work, people automatically assume I love calendar resets, but nope. This exact scenario is exactly why I don’t. It’s a huge tease to get a taste of what work is like when you have space to do it, but this space is immediately ripped away because calendar resets do nothing to change bad habits. The person who only knows how to get anything done in meetings has no new training. The teams with no processes for collaborating async still need calls to work together. And the managers who use meetings to gauge whether work is getting done are now frantic. Calendar resets are aspirational but not rooted in reality. It’s like when a person who is tired of their mess spends one day just tossing everything. Next month, they’re back to living in a pigsty because it wasn’t the stuff that made the place messy. It was the person and the habits. There are two key skills to learn when trying to reduce meetings:
People frequently jump right to skill 2 and then wonder why their calendar is a mess again a month later. You need both skills to maintain a healthy calendar. It can be tempting to overhaul everything overnight when you’re feeling overwhelmed, but I’d like to encourage you to instead focus on these small steps this week:
Start with just these three items. Keep what works and toss what doesn’t. As with anything, the more you practice, the better habits you’ll build. And this time, when you clear your calendar, it’ll be for good. If you’re dealing with a similar problem, join the Work Forward Society waitlist to receive actionable tips to get rid of your bad meetings. TLDRWhen trying to reduce meetings, it's important to understand two skills:
Don't jump right to skill two and then wonder why your calendar is a mess again a month later. Quote of the WeekMeetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer the meetings the better. - Peter Drucker In Other NewsEmployees voted on the worst workplace jargon. Here’s the number-one phrase that annoys your coworkers
In Case You Missed ItLive Remote Work Q&A Event
|
9-5, Monday-Friday, in-person office work are all relics of the past. Let's revolutionize how you live by changing how you work.
Hey there, Trying out something new this week. I'm sharing a quick recap of my favorite lessons, reads, and shares of the month. Let me know if this is something you'd like me to keep doing! January 2025 Recap Read this on the web | Subscribe Reads This month, I read The Nvidia Way by Tae Kim, which is about how Jensen Huang built Nvidia into a world-leading tech company. The Good: The book tells a time-pertinent story of Nvidia's rise and is a relatively quick read for a technically heavy...
Ambition is about striving for greatness and reaching our full potential. Yet, for too long, ambition has been overshadowed by hustle culture - a relentless push to work harder, faster, and longer. Ironically, this mindset often hinders us from achieving our goals by prioritizing busyness over meaningful progress. Enter Human Ambition. This philosophy is for those who dare to aim high but reject the unsustainable grind. It’s about unlocking your potential by acknowledging that we are not...
Six-year-olds have life figured out... or at least they think they do. But one thing you probably did know better at that age was what made you happy. Back then, we weren't influenced by societal expectations, the need for status, or the realities of life. So we dreamed big. We wanted to become singers, astronauts, superheroes, and more. Now, years later, how many of us are in the careers we dreamed up as kids? Not many. And that's probably for the best (being a superhero isn't really...