There is a whole category of web page that will multiply attendees by salaries and tell you a recurring meeting costs your company $47,000 a year. They are free, they are well built, and most of them exist to collect your email address. ...
Two people have eleven meeting hours this week. The first has them in four blocks: Monday afternoon, Wednesday morning, Wednesday afternoon, Friday morning. Three of her days contain a clear stretch of four hours or more. The second has them spread across ten sessions, roughly one every ninety minutes, every day. His longest uninterrupted stretch all week is fifty-five minutes, and it is on Friday at 4pm. ...
Most time logs die on day four. Not because the person lacked discipline. Because the log asked for more precision than a working day can produce, and by Wednesday the honest options were falsifying it or abandoning it. Everyone abandons it, then concludes they are bad at tracking time. ...
How many meetings is too many is a question that wants a number back. Something like “more than fifteen hours a week”, so you can hold your calendar up against it and be told you are right. The number does not exist. Not in a form you should quote, and not in a form that would help you if it did. ...
You already know the week is wrong. That is not the problem. The problem is that when someone asks you to justify changing it, “I have too many meetings” is not an argument — it is a mood, and moods lose to a manager who has a roadmap. ...