Do you find you're juggling multiple calendars or diaries because you need to schedule time with different clients, teams or you're trying to separate personal and work time?

On average, busy professionals attend up to 60 meetings a month. So you can get easily overbooked if you don't manage how you allocate your time.

Whether you have control over your own calendar or your PA or colleagues also make appointments for you, it makes sense to have a few guidelines in place for how you and others manage your time and your availability.

Block out work time - so meetings don’t get booked into a time slot when you have other work to do. Create time in the week to catch up on admin, finance or marketing. The same applies for personal time or exercise. Block it out in your calendar.

Block out meeting time - if other people are able to book meetings in your calendar - set aside blocks of 'meeting' time in the week. Either on a particular day or at a particular time so you avoid a scatter-gun approach with meetings all over the place.

Limit the number of meetings - this depends on the location and travel time between meetings, how long these meetings are but a maximum of three to four each day might be as many as you can manage. When you have back-to-back days of meetings, there's never any time to catch-up or you spend your evenings and weekends doing so.

No meetings on a Monday or Friday or only book meetings on three days out of five, leaving two days a week for preparation, follow-up, writing meeting notes and actually getting work done. If you spend all week in meetings or travelling, when are you going to get all your other work done? When it's unavoidable at least book out a day or two the following week as office/non-meeting time.

Minimise unnecessary travelling. Can you hold the meeting virtually or arrange two meetings in a similar location or close enough to limit travelling time.

Eliminate back-to-back meetings - you know how well that works! A common problem when you think you can achieve more than you can. Leave at least 15 minutes between meetings, preferably 30 and as long as you need to get from Meeting A to Meeting B. Allow time to review your notes before the meeting and time to jot down any important actions after each meeting.

Limit meetings after 4pm or set aside one or two days a week when you have evening meetings. If you need to meet with clients outside of normal working hours or you work across timezones, it doesn't have to be every evening or every weekend.

Avoid early morning starts - especially on a Monday. Unless you and whoever you're meeting love early mornings or it's an opportunity to finish early. It can end up extending the day if you both start early and finish late.

Avoid meetings on your first day back from holiday or after you've been out of the office for a few days. Use this time to catch-up, clear your Inbox and reconnect with your team.

Of course there are exceptions but if you start with a structure for how meetings fit into your week, you'll be more productive with your non-meeting time and less stressed out by too many meetings, meetings that over-run or unscheduled meetings.

Do other people need to be able to book meetings and appointments with you? Rather than trying to juggle different calendars or going through the frustration of trying to find a time that works, use an online booking system such as Acuity to enable people to book meetings and appointments with you.

Avoid the email or phone ping pong trying to find a suitable time for several people to meet. Use a tool like Doodle. Enter your suggested times and then find which is the best fit.

Starting next week on the 5th March:

I’m excited to be a guest expert speaker in the Total Time Mastery Masterclass Series, a free online event for women entrepreneurs who want to grow a thriving business AND have a life!

This free training will teach you how to banish stress and overwhelm and collapse your timeline to success. It will teach you some powerful “hacks” and new strategies to get you want to be sooner AND with grace. It’s all online, easy and free. Join me and the other experts - just register HERE.

I’m running regular Live sessions on my Facebook Page - they’re short between 15-20 minutes with tips and ideas around a particular aspect of improving your time management and productivity. This month they’ve been about working from home.