A crowded calendar is evidence of commitments, not proof of progress. Clearing space begins with the decisions each event is meant to support.
Audit one representative week
Export or review one week without sharing private calendar details. Label each block: decision, collaboration, support, focused delivery, preparation or personal constraint. Ask which recurring meeting produced a decision or useful artifact the last time it ran. Keep the context of unusual weeks; a launch week should not become the standard for every month.
Change one recurring default
For a meeting with no current decision, cancel one occurrence or replace it with a written update and an explicit question. Shorten another where the agenda fits. Protect the preparation and follow-up that a meeting creates; moving a meeting without allocating that work only hides the cost. Give people a route to raise an urgent issue outside the cancelled slot.
Test the result
After two weeks, ask whether decisions arrived on time, whether the intended work was delivered and whether the cost moved to somebody else. The aim is not a target number of meeting hours. Some collaborative work deserves synchronous time. A useful calendar makes its purpose visible and leaves enough capacity to act on the decisions made there.
Try it in a real workweek
A weekly 60-minute status meeting often repeats a dashboard. The team tries a written update and a 20-minute decision slot for blockers. They compare the number of unresolved issues and the time to approve work, not just the calendar minutes saved.
Do not delete accessibility, training or relationship-building time simply because its value is not captured in a dashboard.
Check the source and the context
For the next step, see this related field guide.