Anyone else here back to back in meetings all day with no breaks?

[Anonymous]

I work on the East coast but with a lot of people on pacific time so usually my meetings start 10/1030 and stop at 6-7. My ea consistently books me back to back with zero breaks and I am really struggling. When I talk to her she asks me why I can’t do what I need to do before 1030am. But truly I get so hungry and exhausted. Is anyone else here able to do this type of schedule? Am I being unreasonable?

[Anonymous]

Of course you aren't being unreasonable. People can't work 8-9 hours straight without a break or eating! And, even if you were unreasonable, your EA should still respect your request to block time in the middle of your day. That's her job.

FWIW, I'm West Coast and often end up working 5-3. My EA is adamant about blocking 30 min in the morning when my kids get up and a 1 hour lunch...though I will often throw on a last minute call during part of that slot.

[Anonymous]

Don't share your calendar and schedule your own meetings. There's this thing called "propose new time" (amazing! us plebs do it all the time) - just send out a proposal with the meeting starting 15 minutes later or ending 15 minutes earlier once in a while. It's very reasonable.

Also, are your meetings efficient?

[Anonymous]

Are your meetings efficient? Are they required to hit goals? are they client or internal?

[Anonymous]

I tell my EA that each meeting is a minimum 90 minutes, whether or not we use that time fully. It gives me time to process the meeting, send out to-dos, prep for the next meeting, grab a coffee, yoga stretches, use the bathroom, whatever. I also put in my lunch order ahead of time and he has it ready

[Anonymous]

I used to do this and burned out. You need to block off time in your calendar to think (and pee and eat and walk) or you will not do your job well. Your EA needs to respect that.

[Anonymous]

Not normal at all. Your EA should have work time blocked off for you every day. AM and PM blocks. Plus eating time. You can always schedule over a block for something urgent.

[Anonymous]

You have a terrible EA.

[Anonymous]

At a very minimum, start scheduling meetings to start 5 minutes later. That is the standard at my current company and my previous company did it as well.

You can set outlook to default to starting meetings a certain number of minutes late. All of our meetings start at :05 or :35. The buffer is nice.

[Anonymous]

Same problem here. My EA recently left for grad school and I'm planning to reinforce with her successor that I won't do back-to-back. I think it's a relic of the pandemic when it was easy to mute video and grab a cup of coffee or whatever. Today I'm 1030-330 without a break - with all but one hour speaking to people who are WFH - and that is not going to happen again.

[Anonymous]

YOU block off times on YOUR schedule. If you cannot effectively communicate this to your executive assistant, then you need to take the initiative and control your own calendar.

[Anonymous]

I used to do this schedule and it was awful. I'm an extreme extrovert who generally thrives off of meeting energy and eventually it wore down my performance because you simply can't get anything done that ISN'T a meeting. Also, you supervise your EA, they don't determine your schedule.

[Anonymous]

Just block of 12-1 and 3-3:30 in your calendar for lunch and a break. Its not that hard.

[Anonymous]

I block my Calendar so I have very few back to backs.

[Anonymous]

You need bathroom breaks or you are restricting fluids and that's unhealthy. Tell her you want 10 min between meetings for health reasons. Does she use the restroom during the day, well you do too.