How Much Time Is Wasted in Meetings?
Calculate how much of your work life is spent in meetings. See the annual and career-long impact of your meeting schedule.
Detailed Breakdown
How It Works
Enter your average weekly hours spent in meetings. The calculator shows your monthly, yearly, and career-long meeting time, plus what percentage of your work hours this represents.
Examples
Individual Contributor
Spending 10 hours weekly in meetings means 520 hours annually—equivalent to 13 work weeks or 3 months of full-time meeting attendance.
Middle Manager
At 25 hours of meetings weekly, you spend 1,300 hours per year in meetings—more than half your work time and over 32 work weeks.
Senior Executive
With 35 hours of weekly meetings, executives may spend over 1,800 hours yearly in meetings—nearly an entire work year.
Meetings are the most criticized aspect of modern work, yet their proliferation continues. Understanding how much time you spend in meetings is the first step toward reclaiming your calendar.
Research suggests that the average professional spends 23 hours per week in meetings—more than half of a standard 40-hour work week. For managers and executives, this figure often exceeds 30 hours weekly. Much of this time is perceived as wasteful by participants.
Studies on meeting effectiveness are sobering. Surveys consistently find that 67-70% of meetings are considered unproductive by attendees. Common complaints include unclear purposes, lack of agendas, too many participants, and no actionable outcomes.
The cost extends beyond time directly spent in meetings. Context switching research shows that each meeting fragments your day, with the average meeting costing 15-30 minutes of productive time on either end for preparation and recovery. A day with 4 one-hour meetings may only yield 2-3 hours of focused work.
Organizations lose significant money to meeting overload. With the average meeting involving 4-8 people, the hourly cost multiplies quickly. A one-hour meeting with 6 people earning $50/hour costs $300 plus opportunity costs from lost productivity.
Solutions exist for those who track their meeting time: declining optional meetings, suggesting shorter default durations (25 or 50 minutes), requiring agendas, and embracing asynchronous communication for topics that don't require real-time discussion.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many hours per week is normal for meetings?
The average professional attends 23 hours of meetings weekly. However, "normal" varies greatly by role—individual contributors may have 5-10 hours while executives often exceed 30 hours.
What percentage of meetings are unproductive?
Studies consistently show that 67-70% of meetings are perceived as unproductive by participants. This represents an enormous waste of organizational resources.
How much do meetings cost a company?
Calculate by multiplying meeting hours × participants × average hourly rate. For example, 1,000 hours of meetings annually at an average $40/hour rate with 4 participants costs $160,000 in wages alone.
What's the ideal meeting length?
Research suggests 15-25 minutes for routine check-ins and 50 minutes for complex discussions. Parkinson's Law means work expands to fill available time—shorter meetings often accomplish the same goals.
How can I reduce meeting time?
Strategies include: requiring agendas, declining optional meetings, suggesting async alternatives, enforcing hard stops, and implementing meeting-free days or time blocks.