Keeping your calendar full can be work in itself. You need to keep it busy to make sure you are being effective but you should not have it so crammed that you cannot make quick adjustments when necessary. You need to block white space for not only completing the work but also for a more balanced work life. We often talk about balance as being the balance between work and home. You also need to have a balance at work. I remember working for one of the top five companies in the US. I was working as a Content Development Manager and part of my job was to go to meetings and then schedule more meetings to report on the previous meetings. The other part of the job was to put information together that let management know where we were in our course development projects at all times. The work was great and I loved it, the problem only came when there was a mandate that all meetings were considered personal time and not production time. If we attended meetings for our group or gave updates, we had to make up that time after work hours.

All of a sudden my well balanced schedule became a nightmare and my work hours changed from being comfortable (I often stayed late anyway) to hectic. I lost my balanced work schedule and soon dropped a lot of the update meetings to get the balance back. I learned to change those update meetings to simply a report that I emailed. So be careful when you schedule extra items that make you less productive.

Although this kind of mandate from companies seems harsh, in reality they are perfectly right. Meetings for the sake of meetings are not necessary. Even face-to-face with a number of your customers is not necessary. You can accomplish a great deal over the phone and by sending reports.