How to Keep Your Next Meeting on Screen

Last updated: 2026-09-17

When’s your next meeting? Don’t open your calendar. Can you answer without looking?

I used to click into my calendar to see what was next. Now I keep the next event visible in the menu bar, so I always know what’s coming without opening anything. I learned this from Brooks, and I now consider it a tiny feature that makes a big difference.

Your schedule becomes ambient awareness. It’s sitting in the corner while you work. Enable next-event visibility if you haven’t. You get fewer meeting surprises, and you carry less context-switch anxiety into the minutes before something starts.

Does this sound too small to matter? A lot of the useful stuff in the menu bar is tiny. That’s the point.

Look at the top-right corner of your screen

Those icons are already a productivity audit.

Brooks frames the menu bar as a reflection of the apps and systems you actually use, even if you rarely think about it. The icons living there reveal which tools are quietly running your day, which ones deserve quick access, and which ones are just adding visual clutter.

Which of those icons do you actually need all day? Which ones showed up after an install and never earned the space?

Brooks and I keep coming back to the same principle: show only the tools you need constantly, hide everything else, and make the top-right corner of your screen a command center instead of a junk drawer.

Bartender is the example tool for Mac users. Intentional visibility is the actual practice.

Take 10 minutes and audit the menu bar. For each icon, choose:

Show it if you need it constantly. Hide it if you only grab it sometimes. Remove it if it’s clutter.

Do that once. Your top-right corner gets quieter, and the remaining icons start meaning something.

Pick one friction point, not the whole toolbox

Once you start looking at menu bar tools, the list gets long. Screenshots. Window layouts. Calendar awareness. File handling. Snippets. Browser routing.

Don’t install every menu bar app at once. Pick one small friction point and improve that first. Use it for a while. Then add the next.

Think of it as Kaizen for the corner of your screen. One upgrade. Live with it. Then decide.

Here’s how to choose.

1. Screenshots that don’t break your flow

I use CleanShot X from the menu bar to capture screenshots, record specific screen areas, make GIFs, upload quickly, and share without breaking flow.

Brooks notes that macOS and Windows have built-in screenshot tools. Dedicated apps add useful sharing and markup features. If collaboration keeps pulling you out of the work, treat screenshots as a lightweight async communication upgrade. Capture the area. Mark it up. Send it. Stay in flow.

2. Window layouts that snap

Brooks’s window-management rule: if you move windows around dozens of times a day, stop doing it manually. Use presets or keyboard shortcuts so your workspace snaps into place.

He uses Moom constantly for left, right, full-screen, and centered layouts. If you’re on Windows, FancyZones is the one to explore.

Create a few default layouts if this is your friction. Deep work. Meeting mode. Admin mode. Then stop dragging windows around all day.

3. One underused key

BetterTouchTool is the Swiss Army knife of Mac productivity. Brooks uses a small slice of it to create advanced keyboard shortcuts, including turning Caps Lock into a hyper key for conflict-free automations.

He emphasizes that BetterTouchTool can replace or overlap with many apps, but starting with one use case keeps it manageable. If you’re a power user, remap one underused key into a productivity trigger. Caps Lock is the easy first candidate.

4. Links that open in the right browser

Brooks uses a browser-routing app so different links open in the right browser automatically. Work links can go to one browser, testing links to another, and specific domains can follow rules without manual copy-paste.

On a Mac, that’s Velja. On Windows, look at browser selector-style alternatives. This is useful if you’re juggling personal and work accounts, doing web development, or using tools that behave better in a specific browser.

5. A temporary file shelf

DropZone turns the menu bar into a temporary file shelf. Brooks drags files there when he needs to hold, move, reuse, upload, or automate them later instead of hunting through folders again.

He keeps recurring podcast artwork locked in DropZone and uses it for file movement. I see the potential for quickly sharing PDFs or uploads. If you keep grabbing the same assets, create one file shelf for the files you reuse.

6. Snippets you can actually find

I use snippets for common emails. The forgotten-template problem shows up when you have too many to memorize. My TextExpander menu bar workflow is the fix: when I can’t remember the exact abbreviation, I search my library from the menu bar instead of rebuilding the same reply again.

Build a small library of reusable responses. Then make retrieval easy. You shouldn’t have to remember every shortcut if you can search.

Start with one. Then leave it alone for a while.

These recommendations can feel overwhelming. Start with one tool, use it for a while, then add the next.

For me, next-event visibility is the tiny thing I want sitting in the corner. Your first upgrade might be screenshots, or window layouts, or a file shelf.

Right now, pick one friction point. Screenshots, window layouts, calendar awareness, file handling, snippets, or browser routing. Improve that first. Just one.