Your calendar should be an allowlist, not a blocklist

In those situations -- which happen maybe twice a year -- when a team meeting happens in the time blocked off, I flip it. So, if I have the morning blocked off for work and a meeting that I have to attend is in the morning, I block off the afternoon for work and cancel existing appointments, of course with apologies. That's pretty rare.

For anyone else outside my team or group that I work with normally, I tell them my calendar is open and they can book a time whenever I'm free.

I also urge people to use email when they think it's possible, since a lot things can be handled more efficiently async via email than via a meeting. A meeting is sometimes required, but it shouldn't be the automatic first choice.

I went over this plan with my manager and he thought it a great idea. Personally, I've found it significantly increases my productivity. All of this is a function of the corporate culture where you work, and I am not suggesting that you adopt practices that go against your company's culture, but the fact of the matter is that long periods of focused work are required to make big contributions, and if your corporate culture doesn't allow it, you may want to look elsewhere to make a big impact.

Booking time for jobs in your own calendar is a simple solution. If someone tries to book over the top of it, you just click "propose new time" to your next available slot.

I do get frustrated when my slightly more senior managers just have a month ahead booked out in their calendar, and I just need a 15-minute chat to get approval for something to keep me moving along.

I want to point out that I do attempt Inbox Zero because it’s a method for dealing with a problem that’s within my control but also within “normal” working parameters.

I had the same issue in my last job at a large enterprise. What I found out was that many people actually didn't know how to use that feature.

If so, I do not bother to decline such a meeting, I just do not show up.

I agree that there is a common tendency for folks to schedule more meetings than would be most efficient, and that there are a variety of reasons why this is the case.

I’m not so sure that having every employee in to set office hours outside of which no one else may invite them to a meeting is the correct solution. I could imagine it being fairly likely that you might end up in a scenario in which this system makes it impossible to schedule meetings with many groups of people.

Meeting time is expensive for both individuals and the company, but some amount of meetings can be worthwhile! Ideally both inviters and invitees attempt to consider as many of the trade-offs involved as possible, and are able to do all of send, receive, accept, and reject, and propose alternatives to invitations as needed.

Just lacks upvotes to be on the front page.

I think it's being removed by automod because most of the comments are turning into downvote-heavy low-quality bickering over use of the terms allowlist/denylist vs whitelist/blacklist. Automod tends to disfavor posts with comment sections that turn into bickering (which is roughly approximated by ratio of downvotes to upvotes).

EDIT: Aaaaand now it's flagged. I don't know it automod does that too, or if that's explicitly a user thing, or even a mod thing. I wonder if users who don't like the terms are flagging it?