How much time do you spend in meetings?

Question

How much time per week on average do you spend in meetings? Is there a difference in what meetings you have scheduled compared to what you actually spend in meetings, due do them going over time or ad-hoc meetings that happen?I'll go first. Since I moved into management, I have ~12h hours of meetings scheduled on average for each week (give and take an hour on alternating weeks), including one-on-ones and stand-ups. All of them virtual at this point.The people I manage have about 4 hours of meeting scheduled, give and take an hour on alternating weeks as well, so it's 3 one week and 5 the next.What's your experience, and what's your position (if you're comfortable sharing)? What's too much, and what's too little, in your experience?

JohnFen · Accepted Answer

I'm a senior dev with about 35 years of experience. I currently spend an average of 3 hours/week in meetings. More if there's a burning issue, less if there isn't really much to discuss. 2 hours of these are regularly scheduled ones, another hour for ad-hoc special purpose ones.
In my opinion, this is about right. I don't consider there to be a "correct" amount of time to be spent on meetings. Meetings should happen when there are things that need discussion. I'm also of the opinion that 99% of the value of most meetings is gained within the first half hour of them.
I personally find 1-on-1s to be entirely worthless time-wasters, but I also know that many people find value in them.
My worst meeting experience was the last time I worked for a major international tech company. I spent about half of my working time in meetings there. It was an enormous waste of everyone's time, and an enormous waste of the company's payroll money.

paulcole · Answer

I&rsquo;m in a leadership role at a small digital marketing agency.I&rsquo;ve tracked this really closely and it&rsquo;s between 70 and 100 hours per quarter depending on whether I&rsquo;m doing a lot of hiring or not.The more important # to me is (outside of hiring) whether the meetings are out of the blue &ldquo;syncs&rdquo; or part of my standing meeting schedule. I&rsquo;ve gotten the former (which are very disruptive) down to < 8 hours per quarter on average. That kind of meeting is reserved for the highest priority biggest and truly urgent issues. Everything else can be handled either async or in a scheduled 1:1.I just try to be really clear w/ reports about what decisions they must just make without telling me, which ones they can make and tell me about later, and which ones require discussion before taking action. The more stuff you can get into those first two categories the better IMO.

nicbou · Answer

I'm self-employed and fairly independent. On most weeks, I spend zero hours in meetings. I'll have a call every now and then, but that's it. I just don't accept calls without a reason. On the other hand, I do love having coffee or lunch with people, and I'm warming up to the value of networking.Even as an employee, I was very aggressive about cutting down meetings. I'd only send one person to represent the team, and send people back to their desks when their presence was no longer needed. We must have cut meetings by more than half.