Packed calendars hurt productivity, but smarter meeting habits can help AEC professionals reclaim focus time and boost meaningful work.
Let’s be honest – we’re drowning in meetings. Remember when your calendar had actual white space in it? I do. Pre-pandemic, I’d have maybe two to three meetings a week. Now? I’m sitting through 10 of them. And I’m guessing your calendar looks just as packed.
Here’s the thing about working in the AEC industry: yes, we need to collaborate. That’s how great projects happen. But somewhere along the way, we crossed the line from productive teamwork to death by meeting. Microsoft research found that since the pandemic hit, we’re all enduring 252 percent more virtual meetings than before 2020. That’s not a typo: 252 percent!
The real cost of your packed calendar. We’ve all been there – staring at back-to-back meeting blocks and wondering, “When am I supposed to do my actual work?” It’s not just challenging – it’s genuinely impacting our productivity:
- We’re now spending 57 percent of our work time just communicating instead of doing. That’s more than half your day gone before you’ve made any real progress.
- Zoom fatigue is real. That mental fog after your fourth straight Teams call? That’s your brain signaling it needs a different kind of engagement.
- The irony is rich: meetings that were scheduled to speed things up often end up slowing everything down, as decisions get stretched across multiple calls, followed by endless email chains and messaging threads.
For those of us in the creative space, our work requires serious focus. Whether you’re designing a complex wastewater processing system, analyzing revenue data, developing master plans, or creating marketing campaigns and proposal content – the constant ping-pong between meetings just makes everything harder.
Let’s fix this (without breaking what works). I’m not suggesting we torch all our calendars and become meeting hermits. Collaboration matters – it’s how we solve complex problems. But we can be a lot smarter about when and how we meet. Here are some ideas that have worked well at my firm and could work at yours:
1. Ditch the status updates for messaging channels. Consider this – how many of our meetings involve team members taking turns sharing progress updates? This is exactly what Teams channels excel at.
Instead of a 60-minute call where everyone zones out until it’s their turn to speak, try a structured post where team members drop their updates when it makes sense for them. Something like:
- What I accomplished this week.
- What I’m working on next.
- Where I need help.
Then everyone can check in when they actually have the mental bandwidth to absorb it.
2. Create “meeting-free zones” for deep work. My brain needs at least 90 minutes of uninterrupted time to tackle complex creative projects – I bet yours does too, whether you’re working on technical reports, design calculations, analyzing scientific data, or developing an infographic. We could take a page from Spotify’s playbook, where they banned Wednesday meetings completely and saw productivity jump by 40 percent.
What if Tuesday and Thursday mornings became sacred ground at your firm? No meetings before noon – just pure, glorious focus time. Imagine what you could accomplish with those guaranteed blocks of uninterrupted work.
3. No agenda? No meeting. We’ve all experienced meetings that gradually drift off course. “Umm, what were our objectives again?” When we can articulate the purpose in a three-bullet agenda beforehand, our discussions become much more productive and purposeful.
Most calendar applications now offer meeting notes and agenda functionality. Set clear goals, share them beforehand, and stick to them like glue. Your colleagues will thank you for respecting their time.
4. Not every decision needs a meeting. Quick reflection: How often do we gather for a 30-minute meeting to make a decision that could be effectively settled with a 60-second poll?
Instant polling tools are sitting right there in our toolboxes, begging to be used. Need to pick a project timeline from three options? Send a quick poll, let people vote when they have a moment, and boom – decision made without blocking a dozen calendars.
Many collaboration platforms have live polling built in. Teams has a poll option built right into the chat window. Imagine eliminating the back-and-forth emails just asking if a group of people are free on a certain date and time. Just use a poll.
5. Record it, don’t schedule it. Got an important update to share about a new design approach, feedback results, research findings, or client capture strategy? Before you send that meeting invite, ask yourself if it really needs live discussion. Research suggests that humans now have the attention span of a goldfish – look it up.
I’ve experimented with recording quick two-minute tutorial videos on a variety of topics instead of scheduling 30-minute webinars, and the response has been fantastic. People appreciate being able to watch on their own time, at double-speed if they want (we all do it, let’s not pretend), and it’s always available in a video library.
6. Question your recurring meetings regularly. That standing Tuesday meeting that’s been running for six years? Does it still earn its keep? Every quarter, take a hard look at your recurring meetings and ask the tough questions:
- Does this meeting still have a clear purpose?
- Are the right people attending?
- Could we accomplish the same thing in less time or through another channel?
Many productivity tools, like Outlook Insight, can help spot the meetings that are running consistently too long or have people multitasking the whole time (hint: they’ve mentally checked out).
How will we know if this is working? The proof will be in how it feels to come to work. You should see:
- More blocks of focused time on your calendar.
- Faster movement on decisions.
- Fewer “Sorry, I was in meetings all day” messages.
- Less of that end-of-day grumpy mental exhaustion from meeting overload.
Research suggests we could gain back 30 percent more time for actual work. Think about that – almost a third of your workday reclaimed for the things that really matter. Technical staff could concentrate on innovative solutions for clients, while marketing teams could focus on strategic initiatives and brand development.
Small changes, big results. Look, change isn’t easy, especially in an industry that values established processes. But this isn’t about throwing out collaboration – it’s about making innovation more intentional.
Let’s start small: talk with your supervisor or project team and maybe try no-meeting Thursday mornings, or commit to moving one recurring status meeting to a messaging channel, and see what happens. I’m betting we’ll find that our best ideas don’t actually happen while staring at a screen full of video tiles – they happen when we have the space to think.
What do you think? Ready to reclaim your calendar? I know I am.
Kraig Kern, CPSM, is a senior marketing lead at Ardurra. He can be reached at kkern@ardurra.com.