
Your calendar should be an allowlist, not a blocklist - mcrittenden
https://critter.blog/2020/08/03/your-calendar-should-be-an-allowlist-not-a-blocklist/
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notacoward
I'm not necessarily against the idea, but I suspect that it would exacerbate
existing issues with team members in different time zones. For example, I work
on the US east coast and everyone else in my team is on the west coast - a
difference of three hours. My coworkers _already_ tend to be unreachable or
uncommunicative in their mornings. If they were to follow the advice in this
article, they would almost certainly formalize that by limiting their "allow"
time to their afternoon. Since I already end my own "allow" time at dinner,
that only leaves about two hours a day when the two overlap. Even if they
didn't consistently fill those two hours with meetings among themselves within
their own time zone, that wouldn't be enough. It's why I have a 6:30pm meeting
this evening, which is _super_ unwelcome but it's what I have to do. At least
it's not on a Friday this time. This situation would be even worse with a
five- or eight-hour time difference.

I don't think this system can work if everyone can just arbitrarily choose
which hours to leave open, on a team distributed across time zones. There
would have to be some kind of rules to ensure sufficient overlap. That means
some people might not get the absolutely perfect schedule they wanted, but too
bad. Be adults. Better for everyone to make _some_ accommodation than to force
everyone in the minority time zone to work majority-time-zone hours - which is
basically what I see happening to everyone in my situation. We don't need to
make that worse.

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majewsky
> The solution should be office hours. You should be able to say say “I’m free
> for meetings from 2-5pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and if you want to talk
> to me then that’s when you can.” In most companies, doing that would make
> you an annoyance. Those companies don’t respect Deep Work.

No, the main reason would be that it becomes impossible to schedule meetings
when everyone only has that few arbitrarily selected office hours.

It _might_ work when everyone in the team agrees to the same office hours, but
even then, how do you schedule meetings to align between teams with different
office hours?

~~~
rsj_hn
I permanently block off time for focused work, at least half a day each day,
alternating mornings and afternoons, and one full day a week, meaning I have
4*4 = 16 hours available for meetings each week, and 24 hours available for
work.

In those situations -- which happen maybe twice a year -- when a team meeting
happens in the time blocked off, I flip it. So, if I have the morning blocked
off for work and a meeting that I have to attend is in the morning, I block
off the afternoon for work and cancel existing appointments, of course with
apologies. That's pretty rare.

For anyone else outside my team or group that I work with normally, I tell
them my calendar is open and they can book a time whenever I'm free.

I also urge people to use email when they think it's possible, since a lot
things can be handled more efficiently async via email than via a meeting. A
meeting is sometimes required, but it shouldn't be the automatic first choice.

I went over this plan with my manager and he thought it a great idea.
Personally, I've found it significantly increases my productivity. All of this
is a function of the corporate culture where you work, and I am not suggesting
that you adopt practices that go against your company's culture, but the fact
of the matter is that long periods of focused work are required to make big
contributions, and if your corporate culture doesn't allow it, you may want to
look elsewhere to make a big impact.

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dragonwriter
> Does your company have a culture of letting everyone see each other’s
> calendars? Do people often schedule meetings whenever there are openings,
> without asking?

> If so, your calendar is a blocklist.

Sure, but what is this “schedule meetings, without asking”? Sending out
meeting _requests_ is asking. Having open calendars gives people a better
first-glance idea of times that are likely to be acceptable and times that
aren't.

~~~
yellowapple
It probably depends on company culture, but I can definitely envision
situations where the meeting "request" is less of an actual request and more
of a "this meeting is scheduled whether you like it or not".

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bauc
I agree with the premise, but it depends on your workplace. I struggle with
colleagues who don't even both checking if the spot is available.

~~~
jdechko
That’s one of the problems I have with some of the “productivity culture”
blogs (and podcasts) _. They’re great for independents, very small businesses
and executives who have that level of control. If I told my boss that I was
only available during certain “office hours” to accept meetings, I’d quickly
be out of a job.

No, the best that I can do that fits in the work culture is to block out a few
“GTD” (actually I call them “GSD/Get Shit Done”)hours at strategic times
during the week.

_I want to point out that I do attempt Inbox Zero because it’s a method for
dealing with a problem that’s within my control but also within “normal”
working parameters.

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impendia
Naive question, coming from an academic.

How common is the phenomenon that the blog is posting about? Where everyone in
a company can unilaterally block off a meeting with anyone else?

I'm astonished that anyone would put up with this. Maybe I should count myself
lucky.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
In my experience at least, it's never been that anyone can truly unilaterally
schedule a meeting. Instead, it's that anyone can propose a meeting with
anyone else at any time, which people end up feeling obligated to accept for a
variety of social and political reasons.

I agree that there is a common tendency for folks to schedule more meetings
than would be most efficient, and that there are a variety of reasons why this
is the case.

I’m not so sure that having every employee in to set office hours outside of
which no one else may invite them to a meeting is the correct solution. I
could imagine it being fairly likely that you might end up in a scenario in
which this system makes it impossible to schedule meetings with many groups of
people.

Meeting time is expensive for both individuals and the company, but some
amount of meetings can be worthwhile! Ideally both inviters and invitees
attempt to consider as many of the trade-offs involved as possible, and are
able to do all of send, receive, accept, and reject, and propose alternatives
to invitations as needed.

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seism
Tools like Calendly do a reasonably good job of making an allowlist out of
your calendar. Put them in your email sig and generally teach people to use
it.

~~~
muttled
I wonder how to make that work in a larger organization where people would
just see your Outlook calendar in the scheduling assistant. Does Calendly or
any product block that off for you?

~~~
fragmede
Calendly has Calendar integration so it checks your {Outlook,Google} calendar
for free times (within the office hours specified in Calendly), and also adds
an event to the configured {Outlook,Google} calendar to avoid double-booking.

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bengale
But what of the middle managers who depend on filling their calendars back to
back with meetings so they can pretend their job isn’t meaningless.

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mcrittenden
Submitted here yesterday, but it was removed very quickly, presumably because
it originally said "blacklist" and "whitelist":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043175](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043175)

EDIT: Looks like this post is marked as [flagged] now.

~~~
coolspot
That post doesn’t seem to be removed though?

Just lacks upvotes to be on the front page.

~~~
readarticle
This site gives me such major deja vu that I’m genuinely beginning to question
my memory seeing shit like this.

I swear I read this _exact_ same thread yesterday about the repost, I swear I
read this _exact same fucking comment_ yesterday but it says coolspot posted
it 10 minutes ago.

Am I going insane?

~~~
mcrittenden
Um, yeah, author here, and I'm not sure what is going on. I posted this
yesterday (over 24h ago) but now it says it was posted 3 hours ago.

Maybe a moderator renewed it or something? Is that possible?

~~~
detaro
> _Maybe a moderator renewed it or something? Is that possible?_

Yes, but I would have expected that they sent you an email about that. (the
post ID in the url is also clearly out of order compared to other submissions
from today - which is exactly what happens if mods bump it)

~~~
dang
We don't always send an email, just sometimes. Usually when I happen to think
of it.

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ok123456
What's an allowlist?

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Rebelgecko
An alternative term for a wh*telist

~~~
frodo_77
Why is the asterisk (*) symbol often used in the middle of words these days? I
didn't get the memo when this trend started.

~~~
whatshisface
The asterisk is often used to mince profane words, and I guess wh* te and bl*
ck are profane now... Or at least that's what the parent comment is implying.
(Personally I disagree.)

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Markoffee
Why did they change the whitelist blacklist thing. Isn't that a bit silly to
be pedantic about?

~~~
dustinroepsch
If it's silly to be pedantic about it, isn't it also silly to leave a comment
discussing a change to it?

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0xdeadb00f
Can someone explain to me why this change is a thing?

Are people implicating it has something to do with race? Because it don't see
the connection.

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MildlySerious
Yes it's a thing because of the implied meaning of white=good, black=bad.

I don't think giving words more power to express hate, by making them taboo,
benefits anyone. But a part of the internet has agreed on exactly that.

~~~
tobib
I'm not sure if it's about making them taboo. We're not "banning" the words
white and black. We're not saying you can't use those words to describe color
for instance (e.g. "the wall is white", "this car is black"). The way I tend
to see it is that we reached a level of sensitivity that leads us to be more
explicit about our choice of words. I would call myself somewhat socially
progressive but now I have to admin that I've never questioned the terms
whitelist and blacklist. Now that I do, it seems obvious to me that "black"
and "white" prefixes aren't good terms to use in the first place. How is
someone even supposed to know which one is "allow" and which one is "deny".
"Allowlist" and "Denylist" or something like that would be way more
descriptive AND would simply be more sensitive to what's going on in the
world. Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, we can't ignore social issues.

~~~
whatshisface
I can live with blocklist but what one-syllable word can I use for "allow?"

~~~
happytoexplain
Hmm, grantlist, passlist. Nothing perfect springs to mind.

