The Calendar I Was Handed, and the One I Built Instead

The week Amazon made my role redundant, I remember sitting down at my desk the following Monday out of pure habit, opening my calendar, and finding nothing there. Not one meeting. Not one call. After the better part of a decade managing teams and programs where my days were carved into thirty minute blocks back to back, an empty calendar didn’t feel like relief. It felt like the floor had disappeared.

I’d love to say I used that space brilliantly from day one. I didn’t. I filled it with worry, with job applications, with the strange restlessness of having nowhere I was supposed to be. But somewhere in those first few weeks, before YVO had a name or a single client, I started noticing something: for the first time in years, every single thing on my calendar was there because I had put it there. Nobody else’s assistant had booked it. No standing meeting had survived three reorganisations because nobody wanted to be the one to cancel it. It was just me and a blank week, and whatever I chose to fill it with.

Then YVO started growing, and slowly, without really deciding to, I rebuilt exactly the kind of calendar I used to complain about. Discovery calls I said yes to because saying no felt rude. Client check-ins that made sense the first month and then just kept happening because cancelling them felt like an announcement. Admin tasks that ballooned into thirty minute slots because I never questioned whether they needed to be that long. Within about six months, my calendar had the same shape as my old Amazon one. Different logo, same crowding.

That’s when I built the rule I still use with every client now, and with myself first. Before anything gets a recurring slot on my calendar, I have to be able to say, out loud, why it earns one. Not “it’s expected.” Not “that’s just how it’s always been.” An actual reason, specific to that meeting, that holds up under a bit of scrutiny.

It’s a small test, but it’s ruthless. Most of what used to live on my old calendar wouldn’t survive it. Most of what clients bring me to review doesn’t survive it either — recurring calls booked because someone was anxious once, months ago, and nobody ever revisited whether the anxiety, or the meeting, was still needed.

The leaders who protect their focus well aren’t doing it through sheer discipline. They’re doing it by making their calendar answer to a question, every single time something tries to claim a permanent slot in it. It’s not about working harder or saying no more often. It’s about refusing to let a calendar fill itself by default, the way mine nearly did twice — once at Amazon, and once again while I wasn’t paying attention, right after I’d finally been handed a blank one.

Your turn: what’s sitting on your calendar this week that’s there by default rather than by decision — and what would happen if you asked it to justify its spot?