Redesign Your Calendar
Back-to-back meetings and nonstop notifications? Not anymore. This Play shares valuable time management tips and AI prompts to help reshape your calendar, so you can focus on what matters, collaborate when it counts, and finally get sh*t done.
PREP TIME
0m
Run TIME
60m
Persons
1
5-second summary
- Design your week with intention by balancing time for meetings, focus, collaboration, and rest in a way that supports your goals.
- Use these tips and AI prompts to protect your energy, not just your time.
- Transform your calendar into a tool that communicates your availability and priorities without feeling guilty.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
- Calendar tool, such as Google Calendar or Outlook
- AI tool, such as Atlassian’s Rovo or your preferred AI tool
PLAY resources
How to redesign your calendar with time management tips and AI
Don’t fit your work around meetings. Take control of your calendar to get sh*t done.
What are the risks and downsides of having too many meetings?
According to MIT, today’s knowledge workers typically spend more than 85% of their time in meetings, which studies show negatively affects people’s psychological, physical, and mental well-being.
Having a calendar packed with too many meetings can result in:
- Less time for uninterrupted, focused work, leading to important work getting pushed to nights and weekends.
- Lower productivity and slower progress, as people spend so much time talking about work that they struggle to do the work.
- Meeting fatigue, which can lead to exhaustion, difficulty concentrating, and higher risk of burnout.
- Constant context switching and cognitive overload, making it harder to stay present, remember details, and make high‑quality decisions.
- Wasted time and money in meetings that are poorly run, duplicative, or unnecessary.
Why run the Redesign Your Calendar Play?
With the productivity tips, time management tips, and AI prompts in this Play, you can:
- Replace chaos with clarity by carving out time for focus, collaboration, and rest
- Communicate your availability and priorities without feeling guilty
- Transform your calendar into a tool instead of a to-do list trap
When should you redesign your calendar?
Use this Play whenever you feel like you’re spending too much time in meetings or you don’t have enough time or energy to focus on important work. Meeting overload may also make you feel tired, frustrated, and overwhelmed. Those are all signs it may be a good time to take a step back and adjust your calendar.
3 benefits of redesigning your calendar
Redesigning your calendar is one of the best productivity tips around.
A study run by Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab shows that organizing your workdays around top priorities instead of around attending meetings and reacting to notifications helps in many ways:
- You actually move the needle on important work.
When people redesigned their calendars around their top priorities, 67% of individual contributors and 71% of managers said they made more progress on their top priorities than they used to in a typical week. - You spend less of your life in pointless meetings.
During the experiment week, participants declined 17% more meetings and spent 13% (about 1.5 hours) less time in meetings, while time-boxing 49% more time for specific types of work (including 9% more focus time). - Your goals get sharper.
When people intentionally redesigned their workdays this way, overall goal clarity jumped by 26% compared to before.
1. Create a data-driven baseline of your week
Est. time: 5 MIN
Before changing your calendar, take an inventory of how you’ve been spending your time.
Using AI is a great way to get this type of fast, data-driven analysis. Ask AI to analyze your calendar (along with your email and chat messages if your tools are integrated) and auto-calculate how you’ve spent your time over the last four weeks across meetings, collaborative work, individual focus time, and responding to messages.
Then, ask AI to compare how you’ve spent your time in the past vs. the following targets, and provide a summary.
| Activity | Target portion of the week | Target hours |
| Meetings | 30% maximum | 12 hours or less |
| Collaborative work Get Sh*t Done sessions | 10-20% | 4-8 hours |
| Individual focus time | 30-40% | 12-15 hours |
| Communication, project management, and administrative work | 20% maximum | 8 hours |
Sample prompt using Atlassian’s Dia:
@Google Calendar analyze my last 4 weeks of calendar events and tell me what percentage of my time was spent in:
- Meetings
- Collaborative work / Get Sh*t Done sessions
- Focus time
Responding to messages
Use my existing event titles and categories to classify each block of time, and return a short summary of total hours + percentages for each type.
Tip: Think before you sync
Managers and other roles that involve a lot of coordination with others may require more meetings – and that’s okay. Think before you sync to determine if a meeting is truly necessary, or if async work would save time and improve collaboration.
2. Audit and reduce meetings
Est. time: 30 MIN
Use the Audit Team Meetings Play with yourself or your team to determine which meetings can be reworked or replaced.
If a meeting isn’t collaborative, decision-driving, or valuable enough, consider declining with a follow-up message to the organizer. For example:
“Hi! I’m trying to prioritize more focus time, so I’m going to decline [Meeting Name]. If you need something from me, feel free to message me or share async updates. Thanks for understanding.”
If you’re the organizer of a meeting that’s being canceled or changed, send attendees a message to explain what’s changing, why, and how they can stay informed and involved going forward. For example:
Scheduling Update:
To keep everyone in the loop while cutting down on unnecessary meetings, we’re shifting our Weekly Check-In to an async format using project status updates in Atlassian Home.
You’ll be added as a follower to the relevant projects and receive weekly updates directly in Atlassian Home.
Your role:
- Share your work status via Loom (<2 minutes) in the #marketing Slack channel by Friday at noon PST.
Watch all Looms by EOD Monday, and reply in thread to an individual Loom with questions/feedback.
Why this matters: This change will help free up deep focus time and include more input from our teammates in Europe.
Go deeper: Check out our team whiteboard [link] or reach out if you have questions. Feel free to comment on the updates with any questions or feedback.
Thanks, everyone!
3. Batch meetings wherever possible
Est. time: 5 min
For meetings that stay on your calendar, see if you can reschedule them to be closer together. This avoids large gaps between meetings (sometimes called a “stripey calendar”), which makes it difficult to get into a flow state or make progress on anything beyond surface-level work.
4. Set your working hours, and block out personal commitments
Est. time: 5 min
To help others know when you’re available, adjust your calendar settings to reflect your typical working hours, and block out times you’re unavailable for personal reasons, like taking kids to school, lunch breaks, and appointments.
Tip: Update your Slack or Teams status
One easy productivity tip: Mute notifications during collaboration and focus time to avoid distractions. Set expectations with others by updating your status to let colleagues know you aren’t available and when you’ll be back (e.g., “Focus time until 11 a.m. ET”).
5. Time-block your calendar
Est. time: 5 min
One of the best time management tips is to use time-blocking, which divides your day into dedicated blocks of time for specific tasks or groups of tasks that otherwise might get pushed to the sidelines. It also reduces the temptation to try to multitask your way through a giant to-do list. (Spoiler alert: Multi-tasking ruins productivity.)
Using AI speeds up the process of time-blocking. Ask AI to propose blocks of time for the following core types of work. If other types of work are part of your typical week, add those too.
Get Sh*t Done (GSD) sessions: typically ~4-8 hours per week
GSD sessions are dedicated time for high-impact collaboration with your colleagues. Use AI to find blocks of time that are open for all the people you’re collaborating with, long enough for real work to happen, and close to other meetings to avoid “stripey” calendars. You can use the Get Sh*t Done Play as a blueprint for these sessions.
Focus time: ~12-15 hours per week
These 1.5-2 hour blocks of time allow you to get into a deep, focused flow and make progress on your work without interruptions. If you need help staying on track and accountable, consider scheduling virtual coworking sessions to quietly work with teammates “nearby.”
Respond to messages: ~8 hours per week max
Responding to messages throughout the day interrupts focus. Instead, block 1-2 time periods daily to catch up on direct messages, email, comments, and quick follow-ups. Place these blocks after meetings or lunch when your focus is lower.
Sample conversation using Atlassian’s Dia:
Prompt 1:
You are my calendar copilot. Using my connected calendars and activity patterns, help me redesign my week for deep work, collaboration, and calmer communication.
Focus time:
- Based on my local time zone and my empirically low‑interruption hours over the last 4–6 weeks, recommend 90–120 minute focus blocks for deep work. Aim for a total of 12–15 hours per week.
- Prioritize times when I’m least likely to be in meetings or dealing with urgent messages.
- Avoid slicing these blocks into shorter fragments; keep them as intact as possible.
-
Return a list of specific blocks for the next 2–3 weeks, including days, times, and a short rationale for why each block is a good fit.
[Once you and Dia decide on appropriate times] Create recurring calendar blocks for these times, and label each event “Focus Time - Do Not Book.”
Prompt 2:
Next, help me identify times to respond to messages.
- Suggest daily or near‑daily “respond to messages” blocks (for email, Slack, etc.) at times when the cost of context‑switching is lowest.
- Prefer times when I’m already doing lighter or administrative work, or at natural transition points in my day (e.g., beginning of day, before or after lunch).
- Avoid breaking up my longest focus blocks or creating extra fragmentation.
-
Return 1–2 recommended “respond to messages” blocks per workday for the next 2–3 weeks, with suggested durations and timing.
[Once you and Dia decide on appropriate times] Create recurring calendar blocks for these times, and label each event “Respond to Messages.”
Prompt 3:
Next, help me identify Get Sh*t Done (GSD) collaboration windows. Scan multiple calendars — mine plus [COLLABORATOR 1], [COLLABORATOR 2], and [any relevant team or shared calendars] — to find 2–3 recurring windows for GSD collaboration time that:
- Are open for everyone (or easiest to free up with minimal conflicts)
- Are at least 60–90 minutes long so we can do real work
Minimize “stripey” fragmentation (avoid creating lots of short gaps between meetings for any of us).
Focus on the next 4–6 weeks and:
- Propose 2–3 recurring options (e.g., “Tuesdays 2:00–3:30 PM PT” and “Thursdays 9:30–11:00 AM PT”).
Briefly explain why you chose each option in terms of availability, time zones, and fragmentation.
[Once you and Dia decide on appropriate times] Send recurring calendar invitations to all attendees for these times, and label each event “Collaboration Time.”
Prompt 4:
Finally, summarize:
- My weekly total of planned focus time,
- Total “respond to messages” time,
- Call out any days that still look especially “stripey” or overloaded, with one suggestion to smooth each of those days.
Tip: Use AI to triage tasks for later
Whenever you receive an email or direct message outside your “respond to messages” time block, flag it quickly by starring it or moving it to a specific folder, have AI convert flagged messages into tasks before your next “respond to messages” block, and work from that task list.
Follow-up
Use AI as a retro coach
After a week or two with your redesigned calendar, ask AI (like Dia or Rovo) to compare how you originally planned to spend your time vs. what actually happened; highlight what worked and what didn’t; and propose one tweak for the following week.
“Create a calendar invite for 5 minutes at the end of my workday next Friday. Include in the meeting description this prompt I want to ask you: “Compare my planned vs. actual time across meetings, focus/GSD, and messages. Summarize wins, and suggest concrete tweaks for next week.”
Revisit and refine often
Your schedule evolves. So should your calendar. Revisit this Play every three to six months, or whenever you’re starting to feel strapped for time.
Still have questions?
Start a conversation with other Atlassian Team Playbook users, get support, or provide feedback.
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