How much time do you spend in meetings?

As I sit here at the airport waiting for my flight to yet another all day meeting, I was wondering how many hours a day do people actually spend in meetings at work. Granted, everyone's job is different and I imagine there are jobs like mine that demand a lot of meetings with internal teams and customers.

As a classic introvert (at least according to my Myers/Briggs test results), I get a burned-out with all these meetings. I probably spend 25-35 hours a week in meetings.

How many hours a week do you spent in meetings and do you get burned out from them?

And if you are in a job where you don't spend a lot of time in meetings, what is your opinion of people that are always in internal meetings? Do you perceive they don't actually do any work?

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Comments

Akaricloud

As a Systems Administrator I spend very little time in meetings. Most are with vendors to take a look at new products or discuss licensing, ect. If I had to estimate I would say maybe 3 hours a week on average.

My opinion of people always in meetings is that they're busier than most since it's often hard to schedule a time with them. They do a different type of work and I'm very glad that they do so that I can spend my time doing hands on work.

erpadmin

I spend a fair amount of time at meetings, related to whatever project I'm working on (ERP upgrades, 3rd party integration for a new app that will collect money, yadda yadda yadda.) A lot times they're necessary so that we can give a status, receive a status, hash out whatever needs to be worked out. Sometimes, I even run the meetings....(yay...)

I don't get burned out by productive meetings...just the ones that are a waste of time and there can be a number of those...

spicy ahi

On a good day, I'll get away with just our daily hour long meeting at the top of the day where we generally brief our department head what we have on our plate. On a bad day, my entire day (including lunch) is engulfed in meeting after meeting. If I had to put an hourly average, I'd say half of my 8 hour day is engulfed in meetings, but usually I have good days on Monday and Friday (when all the big wigs aren't in the office) and the middle of the week more closely resembles a bad day.

NetworkVeteran

paul78 wrote: »

I was wondering how many hours a day do people actually spend in meetings at work.

I'd estimate I spend about 20hrs/week in meetings.

How many hours a week do you spent in meetings and do you get burned out from them?

Not so much. Almost every meeting I propose/accept has a clear objective. I have no qualms about ending/leaving a 45-minute meeting at the 15-minute mark if all my objectives are met.

I only feel "burned out" when I occasionally must attend a meeting that doesn't directly or indirectly serve my objectives or that drags on much longer than necessary.

Mrock4

I feel your pain paul. I have generally spent about 15-20 hours a week in meetings. Where I work, we often joke that we have meetings to simply discuss having other meetings. It's not too far from the truth.

The good news is, I'm somewhat of a rebel in the meeting sense, because I simply don't attend all of the meetings I *could* attend. If I attended every meeting, my team would end up missing deadlines. Sad, but true.

N2IT

Paul, if my boss or myself is running the meeting usually 30 minutes to 1 hour tops. If others are running the meetings who knows.

Total 10 hours a week usually.

QHalo

I attend about 1.5 hours worth a meetings a week. If you don't count my boss coming into my office in the morning and talking for 30 minutes each day or other times randomly. But we've been working together in some capacity for more than 8 years now so it's less about what's going on and more about BS'ing.

TLeTourneau

Normally a hour every two weeks.

paul78

Thanks for sharing your experiences and thoughts.

I am wondering if all these meetings are really efficient for the company. I can understand project meetings to hash out designs, etc. And obviously in larger companies, meetings facilitate communications more effectively than hundreds of emails back and forth. I think I will have to meditate on it more.

Lately, I have been scheduling meetings in 15 minute increments. I had tried blocking out chucks of time each day but that didn't seem to always work. I was half thinking that maybe I should remove the chairs from my office but that seemed rude.

erpadmin

This might help you out...

N(N-1)/2 – Formula for Number of Communication Channels « Project Management Essentials

(That formula was the easiest thing to remember when gunning for Project+ [and now PMP]) Hopefully you will go down the rabbit hole for understanding "Communications Management" and why it's important (or for you, not important, if meetings really aren't your thing.)

Forsaken_GA

Thankfully, our management insulates us from most of the bureaucratic nonsense. Other than the occasional team meeting, or the occasional all staff meeting, the only time we get called in is for a particularly nasty post mortem when the tech involved requires more than a cursory understanding or explanation as to why things broke (I'm expecting one of those this week... we're splitting an AS, and the last time we tried it, it didn't go well. 20 step process, couldn't get past step 1 hehe)

MiikeB

Current job - no meetings
Last position - 8-10 hours a week and it was awful. Almost none of the meetings were productive, but somehow they justified it as part of the ITIL model or something.
When I was the boss - I had a 15 minute rule, no bs'ing. If you had a question that pertained to you only or needed further clarification on something you could see me after the meeting. One of my biggest pet peeves is people asking questions in a meeting that only apply to their unique job or situation.

SteveLord

Probably around 5 hours a month tops. Much of that are meetings I voluntarily attend outside my office that are being hosted by other state IT personnel. I try and stay on top of where things are going and network with people as much as possible.

healthyboy

i do not attend meetings much just team meetings etc, meetings are really boring and a time waster in opinion most people are there to show that they care.

Zartanasaurus

NetworkVeteran wrote: »

I only feel "burned out" when I occasionally must attend a meeting that doesn't directly or indirectly serve my objectives or that drags on much longer than necessary.

I have way too many meetings and 99% of them are of this variety.

NetworkVeteran

For those who feel they are spending too much time in meetings...

Can you decline or tune-out of these meetings? If someone invites me to a meeting that doesn't serve my purposes, I usually decline it. If I'm not sure whether it serves my purposes I will give the organizer a quick call to confirm. I ignore less-important "mandatory" meetings, but dial-in to important ones with my speakerphone on low so I can keep doing productive work.

In a previous role, I had a manager who called lots of "mandatory" meetings that didn't serve my projects' purposes. How I handled it was that I discussed and included his meeting/status requirements in the project timelines I sent to upper-management. It led to some tensions for a couple weeks, but soon enough I had trained my manager how to behave.

Roguetadhg

I use the sending mute button, Record via iPod, go about the day. If it's important enough I'll just listen to the iPod.

BigMevy

paul78 wrote: »

How many hours a week do you spent in meetings and do you get burned out from them?

Probably 4-5, pretty light really.

paul78 wrote: »

And if you are in a job where you don't spend a lot of time in meetings, what is your opinion of people that are always in internal meetings?

It depends really. I feel some sympathy, as I've worked with people who spend almost every day all day in meetings, and have to catch up on "real" work whenever they can. I've worked with others who feel they aren't doing their job unless they have their calendar booked all the time, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them.

paul78 wrote: »

Do you perceive they don't actually do any work?

Largely, no. I think about 80% of every meeting is filler. Someone griping, someone asking for information they've either already been given, or could get easily with a one-on-one conversation at another time, someone proposing another meeting later to talk about something else, etc.

Not a big fan of meetings, if I had to be in them 30 hours a week, I'd find another job.

paul78

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. I chew on some of the posts and respond tonight. I'm off to an all day meeting which starts at 7:00am

joshmadakor

Less than 3 hours/week

paul78

@erpadmin-thanks for the link. It was very informative. While it doesn't really apply to my own situation, it certainly caused me to pause and re-evaluate some of my thinking about project communications.

@rougetaghd- be careful with that. Some states in the US require two party consent to record phone calls. Not to mention, you could violating your company's confidentiality.

@networkveteran- most of my meetings are already decline. I am actually fortunate to have a gatekeeper for my calendar.

I was wondering what people thought of meetings and folks that spend a lot of time in them. It's helpful to me to read everyone's thoughts.

Also - I wasn't really clear before as well. My job really does require my participation in many decisions so consequently, I end up in lots of meetings. A big part of my struggle is that I find it exhausting mentally to be "on" for long stretches and being around a lot of people and watching what I do and say. Sometimes, I really miss just being in front of a keyboard programming or configuring a system.

paul78

NetworkVeteran

paul78 wrote: »

A big part of my struggle is that I find it exhausting mentally to be "on" for long stretches and being around a lot of people and watching what I do and say. Sometimes, I really miss just being in front of a keyboard programming or configuring a system.

Lo siento, amigo. "Only" 4.5 hours of meetings today, and I am totally, utterly beat.

Devilry

I typically spend about 6-8 hours a week in meetings.

the_Grinch

Ah, not important enough to be in meetings. On occasion I'll have a meeting with the IT Manager to get my opinion on how to best do something when it relates to active directory or anything truly technical (he's a programmer by trade and manages the other programmers). My boss get's pulled into meeting on a regular basis and in my department people are forever in meetings. Never once had I thought that this meant they weren't doing work. The look on most people's faces when they return from meetings tells me I am glad I don't get invited.

Mrock4

the_Grinch wrote: »

The look on most people's faces when they return from meetings tells me I am glad I don't get invited.

That's pretty much how it is where I work. I'd say about 1/10 meetings we have are really meaningful, and there's a significant takeaway from the meeting (ie: due-outs, deadlines). The one bright side to meetings though, is it definitely fosters (albeit forcefully) some cooperation between sections..such as networks & virtualization teams, service desk and system engineers, etc..