Defend Meeting Overload puts a ceiling on how much of your time goes into meetings. You decide how many hours of meetings you're willing to take in a day, a week, or both. When you reach that number, Reclaim defends your remaining time by creating Focus events on your calendar.
Creating the agent
Click Add at the top of your Agents list, or Create in the top navigation, to open the Agent library. Choose Focus from the left-hand navigation, then Defend Meeting Overload.
Setting your Agent rules
Meeting Maximum: Two controls, and you can use either or both — each has its own checkbox.
Weekly max for meetings: a slider from 1 to 45 hours
Daily max for meetings: a slider from 1 to 9 hours
Minimum event duration sets how small those blocks can be, 30 minutes by default. Raise it if you'd rather have fewer & longer blocks than several short ones.
Scheduling hours controls when this can happen, set to your Working Hours by default, but you can choose 'One-Off' hours and narrow the days and hours window.
When there are scheduling conflicts allows you to decide whether you want to auto-decline meetings that interrupt your Focus Time, and send a message to the organizer who invited you.
How does Focus work on the calendar?
Like all Reclaim smart events, Focus Time blocks help you defend the time you need while staying flexible. Focus blocks intelligently reschedule to the next best time – just like Habits and Smart meetings – adapting around higher-priority items and meetings.
Focus Time will automatically reschedule when interrupted by another event that you RSVP yes to.
When you move a Focus event on your calendar, it will automatically lock and stop moving, even if it's interrupted by another event.
When you delete a Focus event on your calendar, Reclaim won't try to schedule Focus into that time range and treat it as a "skip".
How Focus is prioritized relative to other Reclaim events
Focus Agents are prioritized a little differently than your other Reclaim agents. The Agents are pinned to "Low" priority thus allowing other agents like Habits & Smart Meeting to schedule. However the Focus events on the Calendar are a 'high' priority, meaning that only Critical Scheduling Links will show those slots as available times to meet.
Using both Agents - Meeting Defense & Focus Time
The two agents complement each other, and running both is a common setup:
Focus Time works proactively to hold time towards a goal by creating Focus events on the calendar
Defend Meeting Overload works reactively by creating focus events after you reach your meeting max limit
Because both create Focus Time events, the result reads consistently on your calendar. But you could choose to name the events differently if you wanted to differentiate between them when they appeared on your calendar.
Troubleshooting
No Focus Time is booked on my calendar
Check your Meeting Max limits - they may be set too low.
I'm getting a lot of small 30 minute blocks
Raise the Minimum event duration so that larger blocks are predicted.
Meetings are still being booked over my Focus
Focus events hold the space with a busy event on your calendar but the agent doesn't refuse bookings on its own. You can switch on one of the auto-decline options, or send lower priority scheduling links.
Related articles
Focus Time Overview · Agents Overview · How Reclaim uses Priorities to plan your workweek · Issues