I tried blocking out time, until people started ignoring the blocks on the calendar. I think my failure was that I didn’t make them irregular enough. Looking at my schedule and seeing a block from 12 to 1 everyday, people assume (rightly) that it’s lunch and therefore fair game for meetings. (!) I’ve had to stagger my “work” time so that they actually look like meetings to someone who is looking at my whole week and can only see blocked times.

I occasionally will make notes on off topic thoughts while I’m working but not consistently. I’m going to work to be more diligent at that so I can stay focused better.

I also will block time out on my calendar to get work done so people can see that I’m busy if they want to schedule a meeting. This has been a huge help when I’m buried under things like year-end performance reviews or other mandatory and time consuming tasks that require my complete attention.