Do you want more uninterrupted working time? Here are four ideas!

Each day you have one or more meetings. The meetings are distributed over the day without any system. One is at 9, and the other is at 10:30. And in the small gaps, you cannot focus and get work done. The half-hour meetings always take at least an hour and fifteen minutes. The constant context switching means you get nothing done before lunch.

On top of the regular meetings, you get an emergency meeting. To discuss the latest development in the project and the meeting is in your lunch break.

Here is a list on how to start changing this situation. I sorted it from easy to hard.

Block time in your calendar for focused work

The upside of this solution is that you can directly start applying it—no need to organize another meeting with your team to decide anything ;-). Have a look at this dedicated blog post: Sitting in multiple meetings each day and never saying anything if you want more details.

Defined focus time inside of your team

Talk with your team to block dedicated time of the day. In this time, you will be able to focus on your work. You do not plan meetings at this time and also don’t talk/ask other developers questions. From my experience, I would not make the focus block too long. I recommend 3 hours per block.

Start to plan your meetings at the start of the day

It can also help when you put the meetings directly at the beginning of the workday. In this way, all the regular meetings are done. And you can dive into the code.

Plan all your meetings onto a single day of the week

Instead of scattering the meetings over all days of the week, move them onto a single day. Obviously, this won’t work with all meetings. But it can give you back quite a lot of focused coding time. It also works well with the defined focus time method from above.

Speak up if meetings are too long

This tip is a hard one and takes courage. But when the discussion is starting to drag on, the best thing to do is speak up. When you struggle with confrontation, it helps when you have an appointment booked directly after the current meeting. And you inform that you need to leave now for your next appointment.

I hope this list gave you some ideas about what you could try out with your team. Let me know which of these you plan to try out. Or which you have tried already?

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