Hey Ash, do you know if Vanessa is around?“ - „Yes just saw her sitting at her desk.“ - „Thanks.“

That’s a pretty straight forward conversation, you probably hear a 1000x in big offices. The indicator that you are at work is: Are you sitting at your desk. Easy. In a virtual team, that on top is maybe also distributed, makes this much harder. You can’t see your team members, and they can’t see you. So how can you decide if someone in your team is “in the office” or whether that specific person is actually available?

Well something that has existed for a long time, will come in handy – our calendar. It will become an essential tool checking for availability. Whether you want to book a call with someone, or just check if they are „at work” that day.

Timezones, Calendars & Distributed Teams

• Add your schedule to your calendar. Add Lunch as an event or even block certain times when you have to run errands, bring the kids to school or anything else.

• This goes also for the other direction, if you have access to someone else's calendar make sure they are free when booking a meeting.

Make it easy to "knock on your door"

That doesn’t necessarily mean they can enter, but they should know where your office is and how to knock or get in.

• Use the shared calendar feature if you use Google Calendar. If not use tools like Calendly, cal.com or similar things to allow people to know when you might be "in the office".

• Leverage various preference settings like setting timezones, out of office blocks, focus time, etc.

Keep it clean, organised & visible

• Sort the events in a way that you don’t have too many context switches happening. This can help you get into the right mood for the day, and prepare much more easily. Maybe color code events so you see at a glance what types of calls you have.

• Keep breathing room between meetings and don't overdo it.

• Google has a setting for short meetings. If you want to book a 30 minute meeting it will only book 25 minutes on your calendar.

How do you keep your calendar or "office door" up to date. What advice do you have?