This series is about one outcome: turning busyness into promotion.

Last week we addressed your career story. This week we move to something more concrete and less comfortable. Your calendar.

Your calendar is the most honest document in your academic career. It shows what you are actually building, not what you say you value.

If promotable work is not visible on your calendar, it is not happening in any consistent way. I will tell you that I was shocked when I compared what I care about to where I actually spend my time. And especially where I am spending my most productive time (it's the morning for me!)

And my struggle was not because I lack motivation, but like many, I struggle because my calendar is controlled by volume and reactive work.

The Hidden Problem: Volume Feels Like Progress

Like many of my clients I run from the beginning of the day to the end. Full days feel productive. Overflow clinic feels responsible. Finishing notes at night feels efficient. Saying yes to meetings feels collegial.

None of those are wrong. But none of them automatically lead to promotion.

Reactive work expands. Collaborative work schedules itself. Deep promotable work disappears quietly unless it is protected. And it is easy to forget to schedule it or protect it when we are so busy. 

When I review calendars with faculty, the pattern is predictable. The week is packed with patient care, recurring meetings, email management, and administrative cleanup. Scholarship is listed as “if time permits.” It rarely does. And this doesn’t even include the personal calendar items that we try to squeeze in!

Promotion committees do not review how full your days were. They review output and impact.

They reward manuscripts, grants, measurable program development, curriculum innovation tied to outcomes, invited presentations, and dissemination. They reward visible academic contribution.

They do not reward inbox control.

This is where the disconnect lives.

What Promotion Committees Value Versus What Fills Your Week

Look at your week honestly.

Calendar fillers tend to include inbox management, routine meetings, extra clinics or cases added “just this one time”, note completion spilling into administrative time, unsponsored committees, and helping without authorship alignment.

Promotion builders look different. Writing manuscripts. Data analysis. Grant development. Structured curriculum tied to measurable outcomes. Invited talks. Abstracts that convert into peer reviewed papers. Program building with documented impact.

If your week is full but your promotable output is low, the issue is not effort. It is allocation and intentionality.

A Coaching Pattern: Taking Back Administrative Time

Many of the faculty I work with technically have protected administrative time. On paper, they have a half day or even a full day per week, per month… but whatever the allotment it is supposed to be designated for academic work.

In reality, that time is often surrendered.

Clinic spills over. Notes pile up. Email expands. Meetings get scheduled just this once. Administrative time becomes clinical catch up time or worse it becomes actually clinical time - clinic, OR, rounding. We give up our only academic time to take care of just one more patient, but giving up your time does not fix systems problems that make your clinic or wait list time “too long”.

Then the conclusion is, “I do not have time for scholarship.”

When we audit the calendar, the issue is rarely total hours. It is the absence of protected intention.

In one recent case, we color coded an entire representative week. Ninety percent of the week was reactive or collaborative. Ten percent was promotable deep work. The faculty member was exhausted and frustrated, yet the structure of the week made scholarship nearly impossible.

We did not add hours.

We reclaimed administrative time from clinical spillover. That meant protecting it the same way clinic is protected. Notes were completed within defined limits. Extra clinics were not added casually. AND we carried out the tricks that make completing notes in clinic and at work easier so there was less unscheduled note catchup time. 

We established two nonnegotiable research/writing blocks. Those blocks were placed before meetings could fill the space.

We declined one low impact recurring meeting that did not align with promotion goals.

Within months, stalled manuscripts were completed. Abstract submissions increased. Mentoring increased and ideas for new projects begane to flow. Those abstracts were intentionally converted into peer reviewed publications to demonstrate dissemination.

The shift was not dramatic. It was disciplined.

Many faculty do not need more time. They need to take back the time they already have.

Busyness feels justified. It feels responsible. It feels collegial. But if your administrative time is consistently converted into clinical overflow, you are trading promotion for reactive productivity.

How to Audit Your Own Calendar

• Pull two representative weeks from the past month.
• Color code each time block as reactive, collaborative, or promotable.
• Calculate the percentage of promotable time.
• If it is under twenty percent, identify two blocks next week to protect.
• Reclaim your administrative time before adding anything new.
• Identify one recurring commitment that does not align with your promotion goals.
• Create a rule that deep work is scheduled before meetings.

This exercise is simple. Please do it!

Reframe

If scholarship only happens after everything else is finished, it will never happen consistently. If promotable work is scheduled first, the rest of the week reorganizes around it.

You do not need more hours in your day.

You need promotable work that is visible on your calendar.

Busyness is automatic.

Promotion is scheduled.

If you need help carrying this out, please reach out or listen to the podcast!

https://www.medicalmentorcoaching.com/podcasts/medical-mentor-coaching-podcast