What percentage of your job requires you to be instantly available?
Work it out, and then manage your diary on this basis. If you work an 8 hour day and 25% of your time is spent being reactive, then, as a general rule, you need to leave 2 hours a day available to instantly react and deal with the urgent stuff that is cropping up through the day.
Easier said than done, sure. If you want to go deeper on this then you need to think about what you are reacting to and why, and whether you should be changing something else to reduce the need for immediate reactions.
Taking a good look at your methods of organisation and time management routines are part of this, but also looking at your culture and your strategies are really where any necessary change will be identified.
But, until then, don’t fill your diary with meetings and then realise that you have missed a load of stuff because you were reacting to urgent occurrences – or that you have attended a load of meetings but then missed stuff that you needed to respond to quickly – especially if members of your team are waiting for you to make decisions.
