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Other day my boss asked for me to ensure I'm accepting or declining meetings. As a PM with 20+ mtgs a week I default attend without accepting as constant resche

Other day my boss asked for me to ensure I'm accepting or declining meetings. As a PM with 20+ mtgs a week I default attend without accepting as constant rescheduling and re-accepting is not productive. I've done this for 2 yrs without issue... Now it's an issue. I also write most of my docs in Pages and export to Word. Guess I'm not getting my full potential productivity score for not using MSFT.

dvtrn 6y ago
I default attend without accepting as constant rescheduling and re-accepting is not productive I started doing this for the same reason but it resulted in another problem: meetings started getting double booked or even booked in triplicate. So now I actually “Respond without comment” so the person at least knows I’m attending and presumably other people will know I’m in a meeting already at 1pm. Yet people STILL seem to adamantly refuse to actually look at the scheduling assistant in Outlook. One side effect of covid is that I’ve developed a very good skill of enforcing my availability to others who seem just fine trampling over the best laid plans without even TRYING to communicate about it. Or when they do, it’s: “Hey your calendar says you’re out on Friday, do you have 30m for a quick zoom Friday at 2?” “My calendar says I’m out?” “Yes” “Then I guess I’m out”.
- brentis 6y ago
  My biz is decent about not double-booking on top of existing tentative mts for some reason, so that isn't a problem. Too lazy to see what attendance score I'm skewing by not accepting mtgs.
- prepend 6y ago
  This happens to me quite a bit and I used to wonder what was going through people’s minds. If my calendar shows I’m busy or out of office, then I can’t meet. But then I asked some people and they told me that most people’s calendars are not dependable and have all sorts of garbage. People have “auto accept” turned on and all sorts of weird behaviors. I try to keep my calendar accurate and either accept or decline real stuff and ignore/leave tentative things I don’t care about. My normal line is “schedule any time free on my calendar that’s convenient for you, ignore any tentative.”
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    People have “auto accept” turned on and all sorts of weird behaviors. That's bravery.
    - prepend 6y ago
      Typically stupidity or loneliness. I guess there are people who click random buttons during setup. One person I met had auto accept turned on and only decided to attend on the day of the meeting. It’s fascinating to me the world of personal disorganization.
      - dvtrn 6y ago
        To be fair, when I was an IC it was far easier to decide the day of if I was going to attend a meeting because aside from standups and sprint planning/retro, meetings were few and far between. ...and good lord do I miss that right now.
        prepend 6y ago
        Nothing against that, but that’s when tentative makes more sense. I tentatively accept many items for similar reasons, but I work to always attend stuff I accept.
Karunamon 6y ago
Speaking as a newish remote worker, it's a pain in the ass to schedule time with people who don't accept or decline their meetings, because when you go to schedule something with them, it's all an undifferentiated block of tentatives, and then I have to spend even more time than the person saved by not simply clicking accept or decline by bothering them through email or slack. Also, once it's known you do this, you will find yourself with people double+ booking you because they know your availability information is meaningless. I don't mean this to sound hostile or presumptuous, but please reconsider whether this policy is foisting off a negative externality on your colleagues and/or actually saving you time.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  Why would they double book him after they know he's busy, instead of before?
  - Jare 6y ago
    Because they don't know. > your availability information is meaningless.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      What do you mean meaningless? If someone already scheduled a meeting with me, then clearly that defaults to me not being available during that time.
      - aksss 6y ago
        It defaults to tentative if you’re not accepting the invitations. So yeah they’ll try to double book you because you get to tentative by either being listed as optional on the other invitation or being non-committal. Also the organizer of the original invitation never heard back from you so they don’t know wtf ur doing. Accepting/rejecting may not be valuable to you, but it’s a courtesy and a time-saving tool for organizers.
ianlevesque 6y ago
You are making things harder for your colleagues and should start accepting/rejecting.
a3n 6y ago
I wonder how many complaints from your colleagues to your boss it took before your boss said something to you.
donmcronald 6y ago
Why can't you just automatically accept? Isn't that effectively the same for you?
benhurmarcel 6y ago
I guess your contributors should stop telling you whether they're ok with your deadlines or not also, and leave the surprise of whether it's done or not for the moment you actually expected it.
prepend 6y ago
> I've done this for 2 yrs without issue... Now it's an issue. Without an issue to you. Has it make work harder for your colleagues? I try to not assume that just because I can’t detect an issue doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

dvtrn 6y ago

I default attend without accepting as constant rescheduling and re-accepting is not productive I started doing this for the same reason but it resulted in another problem: meetings started getting double booked or even booked in triplicate. So now I actually “Respond without comment” so the person at least knows I’m attending and presumably other people will know I’m in a meeting already at 1pm. Yet people STILL seem to adamantly refuse to actually look at the scheduling assistant in Outlook. One side effect of covid is that I’ve developed a very good skill of enforcing my availability to others who seem just fine trampling over the best laid plans without even TRYING to communicate about it. Or when they do, it’s: “Hey your calendar says you’re out on Friday, do you have 30m for a quick zoom Friday at 2?” “My calendar says I’m out?” “Yes” “Then I guess I’m out”.

brentis 6y ago
My biz is decent about not double-booking on top of existing tentative mts for some reason, so that isn't a problem. Too lazy to see what attendance score I'm skewing by not accepting mtgs.
prepend 6y ago
This happens to me quite a bit and I used to wonder what was going through people’s minds. If my calendar shows I’m busy or out of office, then I can’t meet. But then I asked some people and they told me that most people’s calendars are not dependable and have all sorts of garbage. People have “auto accept” turned on and all sorts of weird behaviors. I try to keep my calendar accurate and either accept or decline real stuff and ignore/leave tentative things I don’t care about. My normal line is “schedule any time free on my calendar that’s convenient for you, ignore any tentative.”
- dvtrn 6y ago
  People have “auto accept” turned on and all sorts of weird behaviors. That's bravery.
  - prepend 6y ago
    Typically stupidity or loneliness. I guess there are people who click random buttons during setup. One person I met had auto accept turned on and only decided to attend on the day of the meeting. It’s fascinating to me the world of personal disorganization.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      To be fair, when I was an IC it was far easier to decide the day of if I was going to attend a meeting because aside from standups and sprint planning/retro, meetings were few and far between. ...and good lord do I miss that right now.
      - prepend 6y ago
        Nothing against that, but that’s when tentative makes more sense. I tentatively accept many items for similar reasons, but I work to always attend stuff I accept.

Karunamon 6y ago

Speaking as a newish remote worker, it's a pain in the ass to schedule time with people who don't accept or decline their meetings, because when you go to schedule something with them, it's all an undifferentiated block of tentatives, and then I have to spend even more time than the person saved by not simply clicking accept or decline by bothering them through email or slack. Also, once it's known you do this, you will find yourself with people double+ booking you because they know your availability information is meaningless. I don't mean this to sound hostile or presumptuous, but please reconsider whether this policy is foisting off a negative externality on your colleagues and/or actually saving you time.

alisonkisk 6y ago
Why would they double book him after they know he's busy, instead of before?
- Jare 6y ago
  Because they don't know. > your availability information is meaningless.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    What do you mean meaningless? If someone already scheduled a meeting with me, then clearly that defaults to me not being available during that time.
    - aksss 6y ago
      It defaults to tentative if you’re not accepting the invitations. So yeah they’ll try to double book you because you get to tentative by either being listed as optional on the other invitation or being non-committal. Also the organizer of the original invitation never heard back from you so they don’t know wtf ur doing. Accepting/rejecting may not be valuable to you, but it’s a courtesy and a time-saving tool for organizers.

ianlevesque 6y ago

You are making things harder for your colleagues and should start accepting/rejecting.

a3n 6y ago

I wonder how many complaints from your colleagues to your boss it took before your boss said something to you.

donmcronald 6y ago

Why can't you just automatically accept? Isn't that effectively the same for you?

benhurmarcel 6y ago

I guess your contributors should stop telling you whether they're ok with your deadlines or not also, and leave the surprise of whether it's done or not for the moment you actually expected it.

prepend 6y ago

> I've done this for 2 yrs without issue... Now it's an issue. Without an issue to you. Has it make work harder for your colleagues? I try to not assume that just because I can’t detect an issue doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.