When you work with a team, clients, projects, and remote setups, it’s very easy to fall into either a linear or ad hoc mode of work. To work through chats.
I’m focused. A question comes up – I message a colleague. I get a reply – I comment and continue working. Fifteen minutes later, another question, another chat. Then emails. Replies to those. Calls. A quick discussion about a new project.
It feels like things are moving. But over time I noticed something else happening: the planning muscle starts to weaken. There’s less and less time for focused work. You keep chasing tasks. Spontaneous meetings stretch longer than they should. A lot of energy gets consumed by the process itself, while clarity doesn’t improve and the workload doesn’t get any smaller.
As a manager, I found that this chaotic, ad hoc communication had started to eat away at me as well. By the end of the day, you feel drained, yet not particularly effective.
So what did we change in practice?
First, we reviewed with the team what kinds of meetings we were having and why. We eliminated some of them because they simply weren’t productive.
Then we created a communication SOP. Clear rules: when meetings should be cancelled, how they should be planned, when to use chat and when to schedule a meeting.
We introduced short recurring meetings. With colleagues I work most closely with, we agreed on regular 15-minute check-ins. Everyone knows when questions can be discussed. We review who is working on what, what is moving forward, what is stuck. Notes, tasks, and progress are all documented in one place and tied to the calendar.
A rhythm emerged. So did planning.
Even when it feels like there’s nothing to discuss, questions tend to accumulate before the meeting. Especially if you take the time to review ongoing projects, conversations, and collect topics for discussion in advance.
Our calendars are visible to the team. People know when I’m available and when I’m not. They don’t need the details, but simply knowing when we’ll talk and discuss things has significantly reduced unnecessary interruptions and context switching. I also keep my calendar realistic, so the team can trust it.
✍️ This brings me to the second important point: every meeting should have an agenda. Even if it contains only one item.
Regular, planned meetings work particularly well between developers and project managers. Fewer reactive messages. More concentration.
Focus blocks
The third thing: focus blocks.
Two to three hours in the calendar dedicated to deep work. No chat. No “Got a minute?”. Notifications off.
If it’s not in the calendar, it probably won’t happen. Yet these are the hours when the most important work gets done — the work clients literally pay us for.
A few principles
A few principles that have worked best for me:
• Schedule recurring short meetings with colleagues.
• Before sending a chat message, ask yourself: can this wait until the next regular meeting? If yes, add it to the agenda.
• If a conversation is likely to take 3–4 messages back and forth, a 15-minute call is often more efficient.
• Every meeting must have a purpose: decision-making, discussion, or progress review. We even built an internal ChatGPT to help structure agendas when they’re unclear.
• Long meetings often mean poor preparation. For most decisions, discussions, or status updates, 15–20 minutes is enough.
• If a new issue can’t be solved within the planned slot, schedule a separate one instead of extending the meeting by “just another 20 minutes”.
• For sharing information and updates, asynchronous communication works great. Loom is one of my favourites: I record an update, colleagues watch it when convenient, react and comment.
The biggest benefit isn’t a tidy calendar.
It’s predictability.
The team knows when we’ll talk, when we’ll plan, and when we’ll focus. That predictability helps move from a reactive firefighting mode to being ahead of the work instead of constantly chasing it.
And then I can calmly move into the calendar slot that has been blocked every day since 6:30 PM:
Family time.
