Your calendar should be an allowlist, not a blocklist

https://critter.blog/2020/08/03/your-calendar-should-be-an-allowlist-not-a-blocklist/

by mcrittenden • 6 years ago

39 57 6 years ago

Submitted here yesterday, but it was removed very quickly, presumably because it originally said "blacklist" and "whitelist": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24043175

EDIT: Looks like this post is marked as [flagged] now.

coolspot• 6 years ago

That post doesn’t seem to be removed though?

Just lacks upvotes to be on the front page.

readarticle• 6 years ago

This site gives me such major deja vu that I’m genuinely beginning to question my memory seeing shit like this.

I swear I read this exact same thread yesterday about the repost, I swear I read this exact same fucking comment yesterday but it says coolspot posted it 10 minutes ago.

Am I going insane?

dkdk8283• 6 years ago

Something that shouldn’t have happened here IMO.

bbotond• 6 years ago

Hacker News is the last place I would expect that to happen. Maybe it was removed for some other readon.

mcrittenden3• 6 years ago

To be clear, I mean that my guess is that it was auto-removed because it got flagged by users for that reason.

happytoexplain3• 6 years ago

That's quite a "presumably".

CydeWeys3• 6 years ago

Now this one has disappeared off the front page too.

I think it's being removed by automod because most of the comments are turning into downvote-heavy low-quality bickering over use of the terms allowlist/denylist vs whitelist/blacklist. Automod tends to disfavor posts with comment sections that turn into bickering (which is roughly approximated by ratio of downvotes to upvotes).

EDIT: Aaaaand now it's flagged. I don't know it automod does that too, or if that's explicitly a user thing, or even a mod thing. I wonder if users who don't like the terms are flagging it?

happytoexplain3• 6 years ago

users who don't like the terms are flagging it?

Charitably, it's been flagged by users who don't like the terms and/or don't like the quality of the discussion of the terms. I think it's a shame that so many simple disagreements have to be so bitterly socio-political.

ok123456• 6 years ago

What's an allowlist?

Rebelgecko• 6 years ago

An alternative term for a wh*telist

frodo_77• 6 years ago

Why is the asterisk (*) symbol often used in the middle of words these days? I didn't get the memo when this trend started.

ThA0x2• 6 years ago

Whitelist. You can spell it out here.

ywhjaknskkkw• 6 years ago

A poor replacement for the industry standard term whitelist.

Tagbert• 6 years ago

I think allowlist and denylist are better alternatives to whitelist and blacklist. Allow and Deny are more literally what this is about. White and Black are just old metaphors that aren’t clear they are just familiar.

Whitelist and Blacklist don’t really have racists backgrounds but it they are part of a longstanding cultural bias that equates white=good and black=bad. Subverting those biases seems like a good idea.

rswail• 6 years ago

There are numerous "industry standard" terms including hot/cold, black/white, allow/deny, positive/negative etc.

The generalized concept that white=good,black=bad is something that can easily disappear from all "industry" with more precise terms.

In the case of this topic, allow/deny is a much better set of names.

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

The opposite of a block list: a lost of things that are allowed.

Markoffee• 6 years ago

Why did they change the whitelist blacklist thing. Isn't that a bit silly to be pedantic about?

dustinroepsch• 6 years ago

If it's silly to be pedantic about it, isn't it also silly to leave a comment discussing a change to it?

0xdeadb00f2• 6 years ago

Can someone explain to me why this change is a thing?

Are people implicating it has something to do with race? Because it don't see the connection.

bauc• 6 years ago

I agree with the premise, but it depends on your workplace. I struggle with colleagues who don't even both checking if the spot is available.

jdechko• 6 years ago

That’s one of the problems I have with some of the “productivity culture” blogs (and podcasts). They’re great for independents, very small businesses and executives who have that level of control. If I told my boss that I was only available during certain “office hours” to accept meetings, I’d quickly be out of a job.

No, the best that I can do that fits in the work culture is to block out a few “GTD” (actually I call them “GSD/Get Shit Done”)hours at strategic times during the week.

I want to point out that I do attempt Inbox Zero because it’s a method for dealing with a problem that’s within my control but also within “normal” working parameters.

tobib2• 6 years ago

I struggle with colleagues who don't even both checking if the spot is available.

I had the same issue in my last job at a large enterprise. What I found out was that many people actually didn't know how to use that feature.

BrandoElFollito• 6 years ago

I guess you mean "bother".

If so, I do not bother to decline such a meeting, I just do not show up.

seism• 6 years ago

Tools like Calendly do a reasonably good job of making an allowlist out of your calendar. Put them in your email sig and generally teach people to use it.

muttled• 6 years ago

I wonder how to make that work in a larger organization where people would just see your Outlook calendar in the scheduling assistant. Does Calendly or any product block that off for you?

fragmede• 6 years ago

Calendly has Calendar integration so it checks your {Outlook,Google} calendar for free times (within the office hours specified in Calendly), and also adds an event to the configured {Outlook,Google} calendar to avoid double-booking.

majewsky• 6 years ago

The solution should be office hours. You should be able to say say “I’m free for meetings from 2-5pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and if you want to talk to me then that’s when you can.” In most companies, doing that would make you an annoyance. Those companies don’t respect Deep Work.

No, the main reason would be that it becomes impossible to schedule meetings when everyone only has that few arbitrarily selected office hours.

It might work when everyone in the team agrees to the same office hours, but even then, how do you schedule meetings to align between teams with different office hours?

CydeWeys3• 6 years ago

I guess the "office hours" have to be for 1-on-1s only, and then large meetings with many participants can be scheduled whenever.

rsj_hn• 6 years ago

I permanently block off time for focused work, at least half a day each day, alternating mornings and afternoons, and one full day a week, meaning I have 4*4 = 16 hours available for meetings each week, and 24 hours available for work.

In those situations -- which happen maybe twice a year -- when a team meeting happens in the time blocked off, I flip it. So, if I have the morning blocked off for work and a meeting that I have to attend is in the morning, I block off the afternoon for work and cancel existing appointments, of course with apologies. That's pretty rare.

For anyone else outside my team or group that I work with normally, I tell them my calendar is open and they can book a time whenever I'm free.

I also urge people to use email when they think it's possible, since a lot things can be handled more efficiently async via email than via a meeting. A meeting is sometimes required, but it shouldn't be the automatic first choice.

I went over this plan with my manager and he thought it a great idea. Personally, I've found it significantly increases my productivity. All of this is a function of the corporate culture where you work, and I am not suggesting that you adopt practices that go against your company's culture, but the fact of the matter is that long periods of focused work are required to make big contributions, and if your corporate culture doesn't allow it, you may want to look elsewhere to make a big impact.

notacoward• 6 years ago

I'm not necessarily against the idea, but I suspect that it would exacerbate existing issues with team members in different time zones. For example, I work on the US east coast and everyone else in my team is on the west coast - a difference of three hours. My coworkers already tend to be unreachable or uncommunicative in their mornings. If they were to follow the advice in this article, they would almost certainly formalize that by limiting their "allow" time to their afternoon. Since I already end my own "allow" time at dinner, that only leaves about two hours a day when the two overlap. Even if they didn't consistently fill those two hours with meetings among themselves within their own time zone, that wouldn't be enough. It's why I have a 6:30pm meeting this evening, which is super unwelcome but it's what I have to do. At least it's not on a Friday this time. This situation would be even worse with a five- or eight-hour time difference.

I don't think this system can work if everyone can just arbitrarily choose which hours to leave open, on a team distributed across time zones. There would have to be some kind of rules to ensure sufficient overlap. That means some people might not get the absolutely perfect schedule they wanted, but too bad. Be adults. Better for everyone to make some accommodation than to force everyone in the minority time zone to work majority-time-zone hours - which is basically what I see happening to everyone in my situation. We don't need to make that worse.

bengale• 6 years ago

But what of the middle managers who depend on filling their calendars back to back with meetings so they can pretend their job isn’t meaningless.

impendia• 6 years ago

Naive question, coming from an academic.

How common is the phenomenon that the blog is posting about? Where everyone in a company can unilaterally block off a meeting with anyone else?

I'm astonished that anyone would put up with this. Maybe I should count myself lucky.

mandelbrotwurst• 6 years ago

In my experience at least, it's never been that anyone can truly unilaterally schedule a meeting. Instead, it's that anyone can propose a meeting with anyone else at any time, which people end up feeling obligated to accept for a variety of social and political reasons.

I agree that there is a common tendency for folks to schedule more meetings than would be most efficient, and that there are a variety of reasons why this is the case.

I’m not so sure that having every employee in to set office hours outside of which no one else may invite them to a meeting is the correct solution. I could imagine it being fairly likely that you might end up in a scenario in which this system makes it impossible to schedule meetings with many groups of people.

Meeting time is expensive for both individuals and the company, but some amount of meetings can be worthwhile! Ideally both inviters and invitees attempt to consider as many of the trade-offs involved as possible, and are able to do all of send, receive, accept, and reject, and propose alternatives to invitations as needed.

dragonwriter2• 6 years ago

Does your company have a culture of letting everyone see each other’s calendars? Do people often schedule meetings whenever there are openings, without asking?
If so, your calendar is a blocklist.

Sure, but what is this “schedule meetings, without asking”? Sending out meeting requests is asking. Having open calendars gives people a better first-glance idea of times that are likely to be acceptable and times that aren't.

iamthemonster• 6 years ago

I was also a bit puzzled that blocking out time for yourself to work at your desk as considered a "crappy workaround". But then apparently the solution is to have 2pm-5pm as "office hours", which is precisely equivalent to blocking 9am-2pm as "desk work".

Booking time for jobs in your own calendar is a simple solution. If someone tries to book over the top of it, you just click "propose new time" to your next available slot.

I do get frustrated when my slightly more senior managers just have a month ahead booked out in their calendar, and I just need a 15-minute chat to get approval for something to keep me moving along.

yellowapple• 6 years ago

It probably depends on company culture, but I can definitely envision situations where the meeting "request" is less of an actual request and more of a "this meeting is scheduled whether you like it or not".

Your calendar should be an allowlist, not a blocklist

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