How many hours do you work, and how many hours are spent in meetings?

35 a week and only 1 hour average of meetings. (Weekly catch up and a 121 once a month)

not really. I’m a manager but Im also a specialist in a fairly niche industry so we hold meetings with other areas of the business to determine the most appropriate and low risk solution for us and our clients, then I advise the client lead on what actions need to be taken - but I don’t need to do it myself; I don’t have the existing relationship with the client, nor the overall view on that particular account.

I work 35 hours a week I reckon on average between 3-5 hours of that are spent in meetings.

I work 22.5 hours and this week I have had 8 hours of meetings and spent 4 hours at a training session.

Education at an exam board. Ofqual and DfE regulated so have to report to them whenever anyone sneezes 🙄. It's constant data scrutiny, quality of exams + results plus projects/new products and continual improvement. When something goes wrong it's in the national press so high pressure + stakes.

30 hours a week, spend about 2 hours in meetings a week. And every 4 weeks it’s a full day of meetings. Clinical managerial role.

What sector @twistyizzy?

Not getting at you, just find it fascinating.

Do you need to be in all of them? It might be that because you’re new you’re being included in more stuff than normal? Once you’re settled in do you get the impression you might be able to decline any of them on account of not being necessary?

35 hours and a 15 min Friday huddle

I work around 25 hours a week, zero meetings except maybe twice a year we go out for dinner and talk shop. Every single hour I’m at work is 1:1 with a client though so maybe that counts as meetings? 😄

I run my own business - work 25/30 hours a week and never attend a single meeting.

No, as stated I work in a heavily regulated sector and we have to have a lot of external meetings set by those bodies. Internally I also manage a lot of projects and developments so each of those has weekly/daily milestone tracking meetings depending on the status of said project.
We work in a collegiate way and emails miss out the human contact + discussion triggers.
I actually love my job and as I'm ADHD it fits me perfectly, I get to hop from 1 thing to the next whilst someone else picks up the detailed actions. I have heavily curated my work life to get to this point, it suits me and I'm bloody good at my job.

Yes. I get 'invites' to other meetings but very rarely attend as I don't have the time.

I work 40 hours a week and have one official meeting per week, lasts about an hour, to check how work is progressing, inform what needs to be done next and for news. We're supposed to have a short 10 minute each morning to assign tasks but that never seems to happen (or I manage to avoid them) and sometimes morning coffee turns into a little informal meeting if the boss is in.

The managers on here who admit they are just delegating tasks to others in these very essential meetings taking up so many of their hours at work, could you not send an email instead?

In a previous job I worked 4dpw on one legendary week I spent 2 days in meetings, 1 in training, half a day on duty then my manager has a go at me for not doing any work!

I have a middle management type role so I spent about 2 hours in meetings a day with my direct reports usually and I’m careful that we do some actual work in that time - making decisions, doing actions. I report to my own manager once a month.

My last job was 70% ridiculous meetings where I struggled to do any work.

Oh yes, when I was a civil servant. We had the whole department meeting. The big team meeting, the wider team meeting, team leaders meeting, senior leaders meeting. No wonder no-one can get anything done.

The meetings might reduce once you are across everything - it’s always I always put new starts into all contact spaces as it’s the quickest way to learn and get up to speed - over time you might not need to attend them all but just read the meeting highlights or wait for the delegated info or tasks.

I work in professional services in a university. I work 30 hrs a week and can spend anything between 5 to 15 hrs a week in meetings. 10-15 is the most common weekly amount but some blessed weeks it can be around 5 or so. Almost never less than 5 hours.

I manage a team though so the 5 hrs is the 1:1 catch ups and project meetings as well as cross team catchup

The others are for a wide variety of reasons, with only a few of them formal meetings and only about 10% of are ones where I can switch off. I definitely contribute to most or can be asked to anyway.

About 50% of my time in meetings. But many of those are really just conversations. If we were in the office together we’d just discuss across the desk but now with hybrid/remote working we have to schedule a meeting.

I miss office life. (Don’t miss commuting though.)

Ha I would rather be in meetings and earn more (call centre) and less non stop calls!

I spend probably 20-25hrs of my 37.5hr week in formal and informal meetings, but like a PP, I mostly delegate tasks to my team leads so very little of it is sitting with me.

37.5 hours a week. It varies,but this week 12 hours.

What a dream!