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OPINION
Reclaim your calendar
Packed calendars hurt productivity, but smarter meeting habits can help AEC professionals reclaim focus time and boost meaningful work.
L et’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
Kraig Kern, CPSM
See KRAIG KERN, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 19, 2025, ISSUE 1586
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