Mike Monteiro on the chokehold of calendars:
In my experience, most people don’t schedule their work. They schedule the interruptions that prevent their work from happening. …. The problem with calendars is that they are additive rather than subtractive. They approach your time as something to add to rather than subtract from. Adding a meeting is innocuous. You’re acting on a calendar. A calendar isn’t a person. It isn’t even a thing. It’s an abstraction. But subtracting an hour from the life of another human being isn’t to be taken lightly. It’s almost violent. It’s certainly invasive. Shared calendars are vessels you fill by taking things away from other people.
‘I’m adding a meeting’ should really be ‘I’m subtracting an hour from your life.’
Mike calls for goal-oriented calendars and a need to understand why they’re necessary in the first place. Just imagine a calendar interface with one simple change: Instead of an add link, it presented a subtract link, representing the real result of yet another event. Passive aggressive? Perhaps. Progress? Absolutely.
