Conquering Calendar Struggles: Breaking Free from Swiss Cheese Scheduling

Welcome to Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together, the podcast dedicated to entrepreneurs and business leaders who are determined to overcome the obstacles that come with running a business. Whether you're a seasoned CEO or just starting out, we offer real-world stories, expert insights, and practical solutions to help you navigate the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

Each episode dives into the common challenges faced across all industries, such as scaling a business, leadership hurdles, financial management, and more. Hear from entrepreneurs who’ve been there, learn from their experiences, and gain actionable tips to steer your business in the right direction.

In the latest episode of "Struggles," host Chris Inman is joined by guest Heidi Baumgart, co-executive director of Small Giants Community. They share the concept of "Swiss Cheese Scheduling," which refers to the inefficiency created by sporadic, evenly-spaced meetings that leave inadequate time for productive work in between. Heidi discusses the adverse effects of such a schedule, including constant context switching and mental fatigue, and proposes solutions like clustering meetings back-to-back and using scheduling templates to create consistent meeting blocks. The episode emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries and building healthy scheduling habits, concluding with practical tips on using tools like Calendly to optimize one's calendar. Listeners are encouraged to create agendas for meetings and adopt stringent time management practices to enhance their productivity and well-being.Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, Business Struggles, Leadership Tips, Scaling Challenges, Financial Management, Real-world Stories, Expert Insights, Practical Solutions

Episode Time Stamps:

• Intro to Swiss Cheese Scheduling
• [0:00]
• Heidi Baumgart on Setting Healthy Meeting Habits
• [0:02]
• Understanding Swiss Cheese Scheduling
• [0:49]
• The Draining Nature of Switching Contexts in Meetings
• [1:52]
• The Importance of Grouping Meetings
• [3:58]
• Creating a Scheduling Template
• [5:52]
• Using Tools to Optimize Your Schedule
• [7:30]
• Benefits of Short, Focused Meetings
• [9:46]
• Building Agreements and Norms for Meetings
• [11:07]
• Conclusion and Final Thoughts on Setting Boundaries
• [12:37]

Tune in to Struggles: Navigating Challenges, Together and join us as we explore the intricate landscape of running a successful business. Subscribe, listen, and share the podcast with others who might benefit, and let’s navigate these challenges together.

Chapters

• 0:49 Understanding Swiss Cheese Scheduling
• 5:52 Creating a Scheduling Template
• 7:30 Using Tools to Optimize Your Schedule
• 9:46 Benefits of Short, Focused Meetings
• 11:07 Building Agreements and Norms for Meetings

Transcript

0:02

Meetings and calendars are about setting up healthy habits for everybody and then being able to set boundaries. So if you can just build some general rules, which is what the scheduling template is, it helps you keep your rules. Welcome to another episode of Struggles presented by NCBI, the podcast where we navigate challenges together. Hey, everyone, this is Kristin with ideacleveland. And welcome to another episode of Struggles presented by NCBI. Hey there. I'm Heidi Baumgart, and I am the co executive director of the small giants community. Awesome. Well, thank you, Heidi, for joining me today on this episode. So you mentioned something very unique. Never heard it before. Swiss cheese scheduling. Yes, that's how it. I named it myself. Have you ever opened your calendar for the week and seen what's ahead? And maybe ultimately you're only in meetings for, say, 1015 hours of maybe, you know, the air quote for you, a week, but they're like every other hour. So there's holes just like swiss cheese, a slice of swiss cheese. So what I found when I've come into workplaces or I end up with a week like that, the whole week is just tough because I have a meeting, and then I don't have enough time in between meetings to take notes from that meeting. Check email in between time, actually, action on whatever happened in that meeting. Recover, rest, eat whatever it is in my workday. And so all those holes, just like in swiss cheese, end up making this week that maybe was only ten or 15 hours of meetings. It filled the whole week because the gaps just weren't significant. Enough amounts of time to go again, go heads down, actually get things done. So you're just rushing and you're switching context. Oh, yeah, yeah. Jumping from one subject to another. And then also, it's meetings are tiresome. People don't think about this. And I'm very vocal about this. You're on show. If you're on a virtual meeting, you're intensely listening. Cause it's a little bit harder to hear through this whole virtual world. Like, you got your headphones on, you're listening. You're intensely listening. You're taking notes. It takes a lot out of you, and you can't just daydream and everything. You're listening, and listening is tiresome, let's be honest, to intensely listen. And, you know, and I would say I felt this way even when I worked in person. And now I'm, you know, I work virtually and. But, you know, and I'm actually an extrovert. And so we do charge our batteries in different ways. I was just in a meeting this morning where it was such a wonderful conversation. It was such an uplifting topic. I left from that meeting with my batteries charged, and there's other meetings that could ultimately be successful meetings where you're like, I am just a little more drained because it took more brain power to think about what it was or whatever it is. And, you know, a lot of people also, I try not to do this, but we all. I'm, like, turning off all my notifications to have a conversation, because ultimately, whether you're on a zoom or teams or whatever, like, you could be multitasking. You see the notifications coming in. You're trying to peek while you're also trying to listen. There's just so much mental load going on, and that's, like, outside of. That's just, like, showing up as a human being in the meeting, let alone whatever the topic is. It could be a stressful topic, or it could be something that just drains your batteries in different ways. Absolutely. So you introduced swiss cheese scheduling. So what's the opposite of that? Yeah. So what I try to do in general is I ask my teammates first, and I. Or I suggest it, and we do the best we can in. We try to schedule meetings on top of each other, which may sound counterintuitive, but I. Instead of being like, hey, we have two team meetings, say, with clients. We

have a 10:00 client meeting. We have an 11: 4:22

00 client meeting. Maybe they're 45 minutes each. And then we needed. We need to schedule a

team meeting. Please don't put that at two or 03: 4:30

00 p.m. let's put it right after we're already all together. Like, let's group all those things. Now, that, again, it might sound counterintuitive that it's like a big block of time, but personally, I find when I group meetings, then I'm on, I'm dressed, I'm like, I'm in it. I'm in the flow. We're talking, and then it's grouped, and then I have, like, a bigger block of time to do whatever else I need to do. So that's one thing. And then to do that long term, I've created something I call scheduling tepids. So we'll actually create another calendar that's like a shared calendar, you know, amongst whomever, your team, the whole company, whatever it is. And it has blocks of time that represent the kinds of meetings that go in that block of time on those days or in the morning or in the afternoon or whatever, and then those meetings are just recurring. So every time you go to schedule a meeting, you toggle on the scheduling template, and then you look to see, to remember, to get really ultimately to get the habit going right, this atomic habit. Then you see, like, okay, we're doing these right now. We're planning a conference, and we're talking to people who could go on stage for the conference. So right now we're just trying to schedule those on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. And then let's not do those any other time in the week. We're going to do be doing this for multiple weeks. Let's just try to schedule those on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. And then team meetings are Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons. And obviously there's always time when other, you know, external calendars don't work. You need to move something. You know, this past Monday, somebody was off on Monday, they were traveling. So things move. But in general, if you can, like, build a pattern or a habit or a template and then just toggle it on and off and follow it, it just helps you sketch all meetings. So you're both not doing swiss cheese schedule, not just throwing stuff at the wall, which is what sometimes meeting scheduling is. And also you're grouping things that are like context because nothing drains me more personally than switching context between meetings in a day, which I would call rainbow schedule because I color code the kinds of meetings. So, yeah, that's a thought. So, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, like, we all create these calendly links, hey, schedule on my calendar. We kind of push for other people to schedule on our calendar, but we realize what you're saying here. We should start limiting that if you're a client, if you're a teammate within the company, like, here's your slots. Here's slots for your prospect calls and everything. So then you're in those modes, and you're in the proper mental state to deal with each of those conversations differently. Am I understanding this correct? Yeah, precisely. And I know that tools like calendly, and I know Zoom has this tool. I know Google has this tool. Yeah, we all have all these things. Just like, you know, some folks only use calendula to be like, and the scheduling window will be like, do you want a 20 minutes meeting of 40 minutes meeting or a 60 minutes meeting or 25 or 50? And like, those are your choices. Ultimately limit those landing page windows, which may take you out of the free subscription of those tools, but ultimately will save you a lot of time and stress and thus money to be like, okay, oh, you want to schedule these kind of like, you know, these, we're going to talk about the conference meetings. Well, when I send that calendar link, the only times available are Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and that's it. And now, you know, obviously, if you're, one of the catches of this is I work with people in eastern and central time. That's pretty easy to just block. Morning, afternoon, we're not too far away. I work a little later. They may work a little earlier for them, the central time folks. And so sometimes when you're like, we only have these meetings in mornings. Well, then our Pacific timers have issues. I also have been on the phone with a lot of Europeans lately, so, you know, they're

my 08: 8:51

00 a.m. or my 830. And you, again, you adjust accordingly, but you can, you can customize those calendly or whatever tool links accordingly and think about the context of your meetings. You know, don't have too many categories because you'll drive yourself nuts keeping that straight. But, like, in general, I think you can probably group all meetings that you may have in person or virtually with probably about four or five buckets. Yeah. And then, like I said, make a scheduling template accordingly. So my, my generic one now that I give out is, let's have a ten minute meeting. So then if we'd like to get together again, let's schedule again, but have an agenda. Because if you're just following me on LinkedIn or whatever, you're like, hey, I would love to learn more about what you do. Okay, cool. Let's get together for ten minutes. Yeah, a lot of ten minutes. Yeah, I love that. So let's get together for ten minutes. Okay. Now let's schedule one for the future and let's have a proper agenda to that meeting. I think every meeting should have agendas now as well. I love this for three reasons. One, I'm more likely to either take that meeting or even be able to schedule that meeting with you because it's ten minutes. Two, it lowers risk for both parties if ultimately you get on and you're like, oh, this isn't what I thought it was, or it is what I thought it was. But now I need to, like, prepare more information than I can. Like, we're like, let's not just stay on for 20 more minutes just because we booked it or talk about whatever the heck. Because I can always fill the time. Parkinson's law. I can always fill the time with chit chatting. I'm that person. And then the third reason is like, you said you're going to build an agreement about build an agreement and then be prepared for what that future meeting is. I'm going to try this on Chris. I like that. I've heard like Gary v. I think he has seven minute meetings because of course he does. So he, yeah. And I was like, okay, he's a New Yorker. He talks way faster than me, so I have to add a few more minutes to it. Yeah, yeah. Well, then Gary probably does that because I'm there ultimately ten minutes and. But, yeah, that's all about the boundaries. It is. And it is about the boundaries because you get meetings with people and you jump on like you said and you're like, oh my, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Yeah. Now you're like, hey, this is the route. This is the agenda. We picked ten minutes to do this. This is how it's going to end. Yeah, well, and when you set funny times, like funny start times, like we

start at 09: 11:25

03, then people will remember and show up on time and it's only going to be seven minutes or whatever it is. And, you know, I was, I was reminded yesterday about these, I, another small giant member was talking about like, you know, we just have to build agreements around meetings and understand what the norms are for our companies, particularly for in person meetings, because we are like internal meetings, because if we just all know that, like, the CEO is always going to be five minutes late, then we're all going to start showing up five minutes late and then every then all of a sudden you're starting minutes, ten minutes late. And then when does it even start? When does it even end? What are the norms in my company? And there's something about like building, like a seven minute meeting helps you build boundaries in an agreement and then, and then there's memory to it and you can build a better habit, whether it's seven or whatever. But ultimately, meetings and calendars are about setting up healthy habits for everybody and then being able to set boundaries. So if you can just build some general rules, which is what the scheduling template is, it helps you keep your rules. So. Absolutely. Well, this has been great. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And thank you guys all, for all listening. And thank you for listening to struggles presented by NCBI. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of struggles presented by NCBI, where we navigate challenges together. Dont forget to subscribe, listen, and share this podcast with others who might benefit. Wed love to hear about the struggles youre facing or have overcome. And wed be thrilled to have you as a guest on a future episode. Lets continue this journey together.