Hello there, reporters! This is a tool you may already have heard of, maybe outside of a reporting context. It’s only recently that I’ve felt like I’m busy enough to actually use it.
It’s called Calendly. And you use it by sending people a link and they can see your calendar (not what you’re actually doing, of course), and pick a time to meet with you.
When they do that, Calendly creates a calendar event for you both, and boop! There it is, right there on your agenda.
The pitfall is, this can feel very hands-off and can even come across like you’re kind of talking down to them? So I would think hard about how a Calendly invite would look coming to a source. But you can write something to take the edge off, like “Sorry to do this, but my schedule is packed right now. Can you please pick a time here?”
It seriously does save so much time. I say this as someone who just wrapped up a 27-email chain trying to set up one (1) meeting that, praise be to God, takes place tomorrow morning. Streamline your schedule!