How to schedule meetings across time zones

To schedule a meeting across time zones, line up everyone's working hours side by side, find where they overlap, and, when they don't, share the early and late slots fairly. The mechanics are easy with the right tool; the harder part is deciding what deserves the few shared hours a distributed team has.

Step 1: find the overlap

Take San Francisco, New York and London. In January, a 9-to-5 day in all three doesn't overlap at all; the least painful hour is 7:00 AM in San Francisco, 10:00 AM in New York and 3:00 PM in London. Add Asia, and there's no hour that falls in everyone's working day. The meeting planner shows this for any set of cities.

Step 2: check the date

The overlap moves with daylight saving. Europe and North America change their clocks on different weekends in March and in October and November, so for a week or three, a recurring meeting can land an hour earlier or later than usual for half the team. Southern-hemisphere cities shift the opposite way. Put the meeting in the calendar in the organiser's time zone, and let the calendar software do the converting.

Step 3: share the pain

When there's no good hour, someone joins early or late. If it's always the same people, resentment builds. Rotate it: alternate the slot each week or month, or alternate which region gets the convenient time.

Step 4: make the meeting worth it

Use the overlap for conversation, decisions and discussion. Move status updates, demos and FYIs to writing or recordings.
Send an agenda, and end with decisions written down, so people who couldn't attend aren't left behind.
Keep it short. A 25-minute meeting at 8 PM is far easier to give than an hour.

Writing the invite

Give the time in every participant's city, by city name rather than abbreviation: “Tuesday 9 AM San Francisco, 12 PM New York, 5 PM London”. Abbreviations like EST or BST are often wrong (half the year it's EDT) and ambiguous (IST is India, Ireland or Israel). The time zone converter gives any one city's time, and the world clock shows everyone's time now.

Protect the rest of the day

Distributed teams can drift into a day of calls at odd hours with nothing done in between. Block your deep work first, then fit the meetings around it; our post on maker's and manager's schedules explains why. Then book the focus block in Flight as a real flight, perhaps to the city of the colleague you're meeting next.

Questions

What is the best time for a meeting between the US and Europe?

Usually late morning in New York, which is mid-afternoon in London and late afternoon in central Europe. From the US West Coast, early morning is the only overlap with Europe's working day.

How do I schedule a meeting with someone in India from the US?

There's little or no overlap in normal working hours, so someone has to start early or finish late. Common choices are early morning on the US East Coast, which is evening in India, or late evening in the US, morning in India. Rotate the inconvenience if it's a recurring meeting.

Should I use time zone abbreviations in invites?

Better to use city names. Abbreviations change with daylight saving (EST versus EDT) and some are ambiguous: IST can mean India, Ireland or Israel Standard Time.

How do I avoid daylight saving mistakes?

Create the meeting in the organiser's time zone in calendar software and let it convert for everyone, and double-check recurring meetings in March, October and November, when regions change their clocks on different dates.