Google productivity advisor recommends zero-based calendaring to tackle rising workloads

The question Laura Mae Martin puts to executives is whether they would accept the meeting today. "If you had a new calendar tomorrow, would you still accept that weekly one-hour meeting if you were invited today?" she said. The exercise is offered to individuals because the group version is hard to convene. Charter reports that a full meeting reset usually is not realistic for a busy leader without team-wide support and participation, so it asked Martin how one person runs zero-based calendaring without the team.

Her version starts on paper. Martin has executives print a blank calendar, mark only the meetings that cannot move, such as external client meetings and important all-team meetings, then map where their energy runs high and low before placing protected focus time. She compares it to emptying a closet before deciding what goes back in: "Would you actually still pick that up and try it on?" she said. For hybrid workers she separates "home basers", who concentrate best at home, from "outfielders", who have "to be out, and you do your best work in your office."

The Dropbox numbers describe the AI part of the workload complaint. A majority of knowledge workers said an AI assistant is now their primary starting point for new work, and 11% said AI generates finished work. That leaves 89% whose assistant output still needs a person to finish it. Themes are aimed at a different cost, the switching between projects and teams that Charter says research links to eroded focus and performance: Monday for product, Tuesday for sales, Wednesday for customers. The manual moves between apps sit inside one piece of work, and a label on the day leaves them there.

The printed calendar has a ceiling, and Martin marks it herself. "There will always be fire drills, but the point is if it goes to even 60% to 70% of how you hoped it would go and planned, it's way better than 0%," she said.

The 90-day block is the part that produces evidence. Martin has executives add a 30-minute slot 90 days out to revisit the new flow, and she holds three-month check-ins with them; at that cadence the review costs about two hours a year. Charter attributes the workload figures to a recent Korn Ferry survey and the handoff figures to a Dropbox poll, and does not report sample sizes for either. A leader who runs the reset and keeps the record arrives at the check-in with a list of the work that would not fit any arrangement of the week.