The Calendar is the New To-Do List
One of the fun things about working as a professional in a high-energy industry like software is the palpable excitement that permeates the marketing group. That zizz and zazz you feel when reviewing work, generating ideas, and watching campaigns deliver a nice beefy return on the investment — not to mention the oft-heard “holy shit we just set another quarterly revenue record” — keeps everyone on their toes.
The creative and entrepreneurial fire pervades the sales and marketing departments so much that ideas sprout like dandelions in the Spring, and the team entertains daily solicitations for another Greatest Marketing Opportunity Ever. Some of these are good, some are not, some are followed through with regardless.
So what happens when someone really pees their pants over a good idea? Well everyone chugs a few 44 oz. cups of QuikTrip coffee, fires up Excel and PowerPoint, starts free-associating marketing buzzwords at warp 9, and before you know it half the team is corralled into a conference room sweating from the heat of a massive projector blazing Excel-generated diagrams that are explaining in unquestionably not-made-up bar graphs how marketing enterprise software to sherpa hostels in Nepal is the absolute key ingredient to driving future growth.
Believe it or not, some of the meetings even have value. (Really, I swear!) These days I have to be a bit discriminating in which ones I attend. Not because I have real work to do, but because I have to balance conflicting meeting invites based on who I like better and if there’s a chance I’ll be able to catch up on e-mail in between conversations.
So you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s the crappiest job ever. How does anything get done with everyone meeting about sherpas?” Good question. The best way to metaphorize it is maybe think about a shared military experience, or possibly a football team where everyone is the coach. The idea is an organism that has every appendage driving forward motion. The result is not a cataclysm of brimstone and creative briefs, but a serene sense of belonging where you only have to think about 10% of your day because everyone else — the collective mind — has thought about the rest for you.
In essence, what you have is not a calendar of meetings, but a to-do list of thinking. For instance, let me share my Monday calendar:
| Time | Meeting |
|---|---|
| 8:30-9:00 | Meeting: Discuss Upcoming Print Projects |
| 9:00-10:00 | Meeting: Project Management With Writing Team |
| 10:00-10:15 | sense of loss, possible bathroom break |
| 10:15-11:00 | Meeting: Weekly Review of Corporate Website Updates With IS and IT Teams |
| 11:00-11:30 | Meeting: Go Over Fabric Options for Tradeshow Booth Graphics |
| 11:30-12:30 | Lunch Meeting: Strategize Sessions for Upcoming Marketing Off-site Strategy Session |
| 12:30-1:00 | sit at my desk, questioning purpose in life, possible trip to soda machine |
| 1:00-2:30 | Meeting: Marketing Manager Meeting |
| 2:30-3:30 | Meeting: One-on-One (aka, a “1:1”) With Director of Marketing |
| 3:30-4:00 | Meeting: Review Creative for Upcoming E-mail Blast |
| 4:00-4:30 | Meeting: Campaign Ideas for Recruiting Campaign |
| 4:30-4:55 | read Kottke, scan Longboard feed from Airbag |
| 4:55-5:00 | catch up on e-mail |
So what does this translate to? While some might see a case study for bloated corporate over-thinking, I see a list of accomplishments. For instance, look at what I accomplished Monday:
| Time | Accomplishment |
|---|---|
| 8:30-9:00 | Organized this week’s print run |
| 9:00-10:00 | Caught up on what my writing team’s working on |
| 10:00-10:15 | Went to bathroom |
| 10:15-11:00 | Made sure the IT department isn’t switching server environments for at least another week |
| 11:00-11:30 | Choose fabric and vinyl colors for reprinting of environmental graphics |
| 11:30-12:30 | Ate a good hamburger |
| 12:30-1:00 | Got soda |
| 1:00-2:30 | Discussed key personnel issues, hiring plans, important managery stuff |
| 2:30-3:30 | Validated position, existence |
| 3:30-4:00 | Gave go ahead on new artwork |
| 4:00-4:30 | Decided on a headline idea |
| 4:30-4:55 | Read about that crazy lake in Darfur |
| 4:55-5:00 | Responded to at least one e-mail |
See? That’s why they pay me the big bucks. With only about an hour of unproductive solitude, I’ve successfully contributed to the flailing mutant octopus that is the marketing team. Now that’s a good job.
Comments.
Shane
- wrote the following on Tuesday July 24, 2007
