Putting the phone out to pasture

... but being as homeschooling my house-bound kid was accosting up to 50% of my working days I'd reconsidered the prospect soon after.
The more my business matured the more I recognised I should resolve rather than ignore the pain-points once they'd outstayed their welcome, and unsolicited phone calls had just hit that threshold.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a lovely natter. Within these four walls (and I had been really within these four walls for quite some time at this point) my clients were one of the few connections I had to a wider world. I'm charmed to have a solid rapport with some clients where conversations could stretch right into the small hours if neither of us had a care in the world. But that said, unsolicited phone calls totally obliterate my momentum, especially if I'm deeply entrenched in coding or composing quotes/project proposals.

Imagine if you will a farmer roaring up and down his crops in his noisy combine harvester, having to repeatedly turn off his engine and traipse the span of his field towards a person waving at him from the perimeter fence, who it transpires only wants to ask him when he thinks the harvesting might be finished.
The telephone had to be tamed.

I try to structure my projects according to timelines, deadlines and complexity - why shouldn't I structure my communications headspace the same way?
So as recommended, I adopted Calendly into my workflows and processes, and the difference it's made has been marvelous. I've defined limited time slots across the week where I'm available to chat, and ask that folk self-serve booking into those via a link on my website. Should someone attempt to call me outside of a slot they'll hit my voicemail greeting instructing them to visit my Calendly booking URL and go from there.

The slots are arranged mid-week and limited to two a day, wrapping around my lunchbreak. These decisions were deliberate; Mondays are hard enough without the burden of having to muster social/communicative skills and etiquitte - I'd much rather keep my head down and make a sizeable dent in my workload to feel good about the coming week. Tuesdays are usually when I find a good productive groove and I'd rather not spoil that. Fridays are Fridays - leave me alone.
That leaves Wednesdays and Thursdays which are ripe for conducting meetings because they're lower impact, and naturally when momentum starts to dip. Talking to people not only breaks up the stagnation, it renergises enthusiasm.

Initially I was hesitant about introducing a barrier to communication, but thanks in part to COVID and its prominent embedding of virtual meetings into the global service discourse, the adoption has been swift and natural; the weight of people-management on my shoulders has become so much lighter. It hasn't been an exercise in deference or disengagement, it's been about setting boundaries for the betterment of the business. And today, some 5 years on, the business has indeed been bettered by it. This, and a raft of other time-management protocols introduced to the way I get things done around here.