Your Calendar Is a Strategy Document
The last few weeks I’ve felt like I’ve been sprinting a marathon.
I mentioned it to my team and they said they were busy, sure, but not overwhelmed.
Err what?
Thanksgiving gave me breathing room, so I looked back at my November calendar. The culprit was obvious.
MEETINGS.
Not just meetings… the special kind:
Meetings I had to deliver something for
Meetings I couldn’t pass off
Meetings that spawned follow-ups, rework, and more meetings
My calendar looked like a pile of mismatched LEGO bricks.
The uncomfortable part is… I did this to myself.
It wasn’t a workload problem.
It wasn’t a team problem.
It wasn’t even a “too many priorities” problem.
It was a calendar problem.
More specifically: fragmentation.
The Hidden Cost of a “Busy” Calendar
Data work doesn’t break cleanly into five-minute chunks. You can’t dip in and out of deep thinking the way you dip in and out of email. But our calendars pretend you can.
UC Irvine found that once you’re interrupted, it takes over 23 minutes to refocus. The APA shows task-switching burns up to 40% of your productive time.
So yes, your calendar may claim you have six working hours. But if those hours are chopped into 30- and 45-minute blocks, you may only have one hour of real thinking time.
My team had space. I had fragments.
This Hits Analytics Teams Harder
Data work is closer to software development or design than to operations. It requires:
runway to think
quiet to catch subtle patterns
time to test ideas
distance from constant interruptions
But as data leaders, our calendars often look like those of project managers. That’s fine if your job is coordination. It’s a disaster if your job is to solve ambiguous analytical problems.
Deep work requires long, uninterrupted blocks. Analysts simply can’t do meaningful work in 30-minute slices wedged between calls.
If your calendar is fragmented, your strategy is fragmented.
Your Calendar Is Telling On You
McKinsey found 69% of executives say their time allocation doesn’t match their strategic priorities.
These are the people that care most about strategy and even their calendars drift.
They fill with requests instead of decisions.
They fill with alignment instead of action.
They fill with other people’s priorities before your own.
And we data leaders often get treated as infinitely available.
If you’re not careful, your calendar becomes a display case of other people’s “urgent” problems.
A Practical Framework: Time Budgeting for Analysts and Managers
Here’s the structure I’m switching to (and yes, blocking deliberately):
1. Maker Time (Deep Work)
2–3 hour minimum blocks
For modeling, analysis, framing, strategy
No meetings unless there’s an emergency someone else can’t handle
2. Manager Time (Shallow Work)
Short blocks for coordination, check-ins, reviews
Useful — but deadly if it replaces deep work
3. Protection Time
Thinking, walking, eating, resetting
The time that keeps you from making reactive decisions
You can’t do good work if you’re hungry, exhausted, or haven’t taken a breath since 9am
4. Elimination Time
A weekly sweep to delete meetings where:
you don’t know your role
you’re not needed for a decision
notes would suffice
the work could be asynchronous
Calendars don’t clean themselves.
A little maintenance every week keeps you from dealing with months of built-up sludge.
At the end of the day, you can’t lead strategically on a tactical calendar.
A Little Assignment
Look back at the last two weeks.
Label each meeting:
Value-Add: changed a decision or moved work forward
Neutral: useful, but not transformative
Drain: you shouldn’t have been there
Then calculate:
total meeting hours
total hours with 2+ hour uninterrupted blocks
number of days with zero deep work
% of meetings you contributed meaningfully to
Once you see the pattern, it’s hard to unsee it.
Your calendar is a strategy document.
Make sure it reflects the work you’re actually trying to do.