Mini-masterclass with Jennifer Heuett, an Operations and Business Strategist and founder of The Small Wins Company.
Jennifer Heuett is an Operations and Business Strategist and founder of The Small Wins Company. She works with businesses and lean teams to build systems that make work more efficient, effective and more enjoyable. She’s dissecting our calendars because we don’t have a time management problem – what we have is a time costing problem.
Here’s where to start:
💡 Calculate the true time cost of a meeting, not just the meeting itself. The formula is Prep + The Thing + Follow-up. A ’30-minute call’ often costs 60 minutes once you add prep and follow-up. A ‘1-hour meeting’ can easily run to two. When your calendar only holds the meeting, your week will always feel crunched.
💡 Set guardrails before your calendar fills itself. Guardrails are intentional time blocks that protect what matters – your focus time for priorities (for your rocks), your development, and yes, even lunch. For ‘meeting work’, they don’t need to sit right before or after the meeting, but treat guardrail blocks as boundaries throughout the week (tip: name the task!).
💡 Build in buffer time, the white space most people skip. Buffers aren’t wasted time; they accurately reflect our need to reset. Add 10-15 minutes after meetings to breathe, eat, and step out of one context and into another. They’re also necessary for physically moving or travelling between meetings.
Powrsuit replaces exclusive, time-intensive professional development with small actions that work around real life. Join now to access this, and over 70 more bite-sized lessons, along with peer coaching, a private network and plenty of other member benefits.
"In a previous life I was taught to only check my inbox twice (almost forced into this haha) however after my manager left I fell back into old habits… Thank you!! "
