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

[TheGoodHuman]

I've recently started a new job. I cannot believe how many meetings I am required to attend. I work 37 hours and 20 have been spent in meetings this week. I need to get into a flow state to do some of my rather big tasks and I just can't get anything done!

Yes this.

It depends how much prep you have to do for meetings and how much work for you is generated by them. If not a lot then easy!

Could you schedule in a meeting free day or afternoon block out for deep focus work ? I have to put 'writing up report' and block it out in my diary to stop people asking me for meetings

I work 35 hours a week and probably spend on average around 5 hours each week in meetings.

The majority of my job is meetings, people telling me stuff and getting advice, then me discussing that with other people, then me checking in with original person. Then team meetings. Then 1:1s with my manager. I have very little admin to do and rarely project work

I work 33 hours per week mon-thur and my average meeting schedule is

Monday - 2 hours
Tuesday - 6 hours
Wednesday - 4 hours
Thursday - 5 hours

And then there are the monthly meetings to fit in and the adhoc calls and the odd extra emergency meeting.

It sucks, most of them are not needed and I end up multitasking through those I can.

I probably spend at least 2 meetings a week discussing how we can be more “efficient & effective” FML!

I am a hospital consultant and work 60 hours a week. I spend 2-4h/week in meetings and they are all directly related to patient care (cancer meetings with other specialists to decide cancer staging, management and response to treatment).

As part of being a consultant we undertake other roles e.g. service improvement. I used to attend meetings with our department managers 2-3x/wk at 1-2h each time and then I stopped.

I got an email from a manager one day asking why I was no longer attending - every single meeting we discussed the same thing and we were no further forward. I raised the same points of concern, suggested various improvements, provided data/evidence and still the same discussion every week. I decided I would rather do work that was going to make a difference - get through backlog work, write letters/reports for patients etc.
The managers continued their meetings - all mainly from home, still discussing the same thing.

Two years on, some managers have moved on (career progression), new ones have started, new roles added (assistant deputy manger?!!), still the same discussions and wondering why we are in a worse position this year…. none of the issues I have raised have been addressed or my suggested solutions implemented.

So many pointless meetings by people who do not do the job, who do not understand the job, spend time viewing graphs and metrics before moving onto the next job in another department - perhaps in the same trust, perhaps a different one - rinse repeat.

50 hours more or less per week and about 30 are spent on meetings. I manage a team so 8 of those hours are 1-to-1s

30hrs per week. I do 30mins per week in meetings and that is usually just a catch up with my manager where we just chat about anything but work. All business is via email.

Stop taking work home. Prioritise and work smarter not harder. Be more efficient. What needs to get done will get done. Hold the rest. It's really not worth it.

Regards, another teacher

I'm FT and have at most 3 meetings a week, fewer if my colleagues are busy elsewhere. They last anywhere from 15mins to 1hr30 (v rare), usually around 30m.

We work 40hrs a week and have a whole team meeting for a total for 3hrs a week, plus 1 extra hour for managers meeting.

I am a big believer in saying it in an email where possible, or just ringing someone. Far better things to do than waste my life in meetings.

I always seem to be saying this on MN, but could some of these meetings be emails instead?

I work WFH 7.5 hours a day. Today I had 1.5 hours of meetings. The rest of the time I spent lightly sleeping, occasionally waking when a Teams message pinged and needed a response.

What a dream!

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

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.

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

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.