It’s 9am on Monday and the day ahead is chock-full of meetings: check-ins on KPIs, business reviews, all-hands, one-to-ones with your direct reports, weekly status updates and all the rest – they fill up almost all of your day. Tuesday through to Friday looks much the same. Maybe a short break for lunch if you’re lucky, but mostly meetings, meetings, meetings.

Whether via Zoom or in person, stacked meetings are exhausting and a major time suck, which leaves you little time for focused, strategic or creative work that creates an impact. Research by Microsoft showed that back-to-back meetings increase your brain’s stress response, which negatively impacts your ability to focus and engage in your work.

So if you’re in for another meeting-heavy week and you’re constantly dreading hearing ‘Shall I book in time for us to discuss?’ from a keen colleague, clock-blocking could be a work trend you can get behind.

Clock-blocking is the practice of booking out chunks of time in your diary specifically to prevent your clients or colleagues from taking over your calendar for unscheduled meetings or calls.

New research from Owl Labs found that 63% of UK workers clock-block to protect their time from meetings. The study also revealed that 92% of workers feel a meeting after 4:30pm is too late and that millennials clock-block the most (57%), compared to Gen Z (22%) and Gen X (16%). And while hybrid workers are the biggest clock-blockers (more than half of them do so), full-time office employees are a close runner-up (40%). Fully remote workers clock-block the least – a mere 7% of remote workers find the need to do so.

In today’s digital way of working, the traditional 9-5 has blurred and bled into all hours of the week when your team or manager can easily reach you – you’re just a Slack or WhatsApp away. But at a time when employees are disengaged and burnout is rampant, managing your work time is crucial – and clock-blocking can help.

If the theory of taking back your time by booking out your diary for yourself sounds nearly too good to be true, the reality is even better. So how do you do it?

“Put clock-blocking into practice by scheduling recurring blocks of time for regular responsibilities, then review your priorities at the beginning of each week or day and assign time blocks to specific tasks,” Elyssa Desai, a mindset expert and coach, tells Stylist. “To reduce stress and overwhelm, account for the extra time needed for each task, block out breaks throughout your day and book dedicated time for unexpected tasks,” she recommends.

Career change specialist and business owner Rachel Grace Elliott is a big believer in clock-blocking to help manage her ADHD at work. “I put the most important tasks at the start of my day when I have the most energy and highlight them in red so that I know they cannot be moved,” she tells Stylist. “At the end of every day, I review to see what hasn’t been done. If a certain task keeps getting pushed to the next day, it’s either because it’s not that important or I have a particular avoidance around it – that’s when I make it my first priority for the next day.”

Set your week off right with just 20 minutes dedicated to clock-blocking, and you’ll find that you’ve unlocked pockets of time throughout the week for focused work and creative flow. Plus, you’ll find you have boosted energy, less stress and a deeper sense of satisfaction with your work.

“Clock-blocking allows you to have more intention with the rhythm and activities of your workday by segmenting your time for specific tasks and breaks,” said Desai. “It can help you to prioritise and focus on tasks while avoiding distractions. It also ring-fences time that would ordinarily be taken up by meetings.”

For Elliott, clock-blocking has been a game-changer for her productivity and for avoiding procrastination, especially as a neurodivergent entrepreneur. “It’s had a huge impact on my mental health because it prevents wasted time worrying that something won’t get done – it already has an allocated time so I feel more in control of my week. It can take a bit of planning at the start of each week, but it’s worth it,” she said.

To unlock your productivity and fend off meeting fatigue, Desai shared her top time management tips for employees and workplaces in addition to clock-blocking.

Either crush it or cancel it

Ensure each meeting in your diary is impactful, valuable and worth your time. Every Friday, review next week’s meetings to decide whether each is necessary for you to attend, and if not, decline them. If you’re unsure, ask the organiser for an agenda to learn the meeting’s purpose. As the host of a meeting, be empowered to cancel standing meetings that don’t have time-sensitive topics to discuss or value to provide.

Be intentional

When you’re organising a meeting, be thoughtful about the guest list and only invite those who really need to be there. Send an agenda around in advance so that your colleagues know what to expect, and if needed, they can drop in and out for the part that’s relevant to them. Try to avoid early mornings, lunchtime and Friday afternoons if you can, and be aware of working parents who may have the daily school run. For long meetings, schedule in comfort breaks. If you’re a manager, empower your direct reports to do so as well.

Make meetings mindful

Schedule meetings for 25 or 55 minutes to allow five-minute breaks between meetings when you’re back-to-back. During these few moments, try to give your eyes a break from your screen and make a hot drink, stretch your legs or even close your eyes for a couple of minutes. And be sure to book and protect your lunch hour, even if you don’t always take it at the same time every day.

Images: Adobe