How to Schedule Meetings Across Time Zones
Scheduling a meeting with people in London, Singapore, and São Paulo? Someone ends up on a 6 AM call. Someone else misses it because daylight saving shifted. The invite says 2 PM but nobody knows whose 2 PM.
1. Map Your Overlap Windows First
Before sending a calendar invite, identify the overlap window — the hours where all participants are within reasonable working hours.
| Timezone Pair | Overlap Window (approx.) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| US East (ET) + Western Europe (CET) | 9 AM - 12 PM ET / 3 PM - 6 PM CET | Solid 3-hour window |
| US West (PT) + Western Europe (CET) | 8 AM - 9 AM PT / 5 PM - 6 PM CET | Only about 1 hour of overlap |
| US East (ET) + India (IST) | 8 AM - 9:30 AM ET / 6:30 PM - 8 PM IST | Tight; morning for US, evening for India |
| US West (PT) + Japan/Korea (JST/KST) | 5 PM - 7 PM PT / 9 AM - 11 AM JST (next day) | US end-of-day, Asia start-of-day |
| Western Europe (CET) + Australia (AEST) | 8 AM - 9 AM CET / 5 PM - 6 PM AEST | Very narrow |
| US East (ET) + UK (GMT/BST) | 9 AM - 1 PM ET / 2 PM - 6 PM GMT | Good 4-hour window |
US West Coast and Europe have almost no overlap. US and Asia-Pacific means early mornings or late evenings for one side. If the overlap is less than an hour, consider rotating times or async alternatives.
2. Use Tools to Visualize Time Zones
Don’t do timezone math in your head. Use a tool.
World Time Buddy (worldtimebuddy.com) — add cities, get a visual slider showing what time it is everywhere. Drag across hours to find overlap. Handles DST automatically.
Google Calendar’s secondary time zone — Settings > Time zone > “Display secondary time zone.” Shows both time zones on every calendar slot.
Outlook’s multiple time zone display — File > Options > Calendar lets you add up to three time zones. Label each one (e.g., “London Office” and “NYC”).
Every Time Zone (everytimezone.com) — horizontal bars for each timezone with working hours highlighted. Good for quickly spotting overlap across many zones.
3. Set Your Working Hours in Your Calendar
In Google Calendar: Settings > Working hours & location > Enable working hours. Set your hours and timezone for each day. Anyone trying to schedule outside those hours sees a warning.
In Outlook: File > Options > Calendar > Work time. Set your start time, end time, work days, and timezone.
When your whole team sets working hours, scheduling tools respect those boundaries automatically.
4. Rotate Meeting Times for Fairness
Don’t make the same person take the inconvenient time slot every week. Use a rotation schedule.
Example: Weekly standup — New York (ET), London (GMT), Tokyo (JST)
| Week | Meeting Time (ET) | London (GMT) | Tokyo (JST) | Who has the inconvenient slot? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 8 AM | 1 PM | 10 PM | Tokyo |
| Week 2 | 6 PM | 11 PM | 8 AM (next day) | London |
| Week 3 | 10 PM | 3 AM (next day) | 12 PM (next day) | New York |
How to implement:
- Create recurring calendar events (one per rotation), each repeating every 3 weeks, staggered so one fires each week
- Put the rotation schedule in the meeting description
- For smaller gaps (US East + Europe), just alternate between morning-US/afternoon-Europe and afternoon-US/evening-Europe every other week
5. Know When to Go Async Instead
A team spanning Sydney, Berlin, and San Francisco has roughly zero hours where everyone is awake during business hours.
Use async when:
- The timezone gap is 10+ hours with no reasonable overlap
- The meeting is primarily informational (status updates, FYIs)
- Decisions don’t need to happen in real time
- You’re meeting too frequently just to “stay aligned”
Effective async formats:
- Recorded video updates (Loom, Vidyard) — 3-5 minute recording replaces a 30-minute meeting
- Shared documents with commenting — Google Doc or Notion page with a comment deadline (e.g., “review by Friday 5 PM your local time”)
- Threaded chat channels — Slack threads or Teams channels for non-urgent discussions. Pin decisions.
- Async standup tools — Geekbot or Range collect responses and post a summary to Slack
Hybrid approach: Hold a live meeting once a month (rotating times) and handle weekly updates asynchronously.
6. Templates for Proposing Times Across Zones
Template 1: Proposing times to one person in another timezone
Template 2: Proposing a recurring meeting to a distributed team
Template 3: Suggesting async instead of a meeting
7. Common Mistakes
Sending times without a timezone label. “Let’s meet at 2 PM” is ambiguous. Always include the abbreviation (ET, PT, GMT, CET) and convert to the recipient’s timezone.
Forgetting DST switch dates differ by country. The US and UK switch on different dates — for about three weeks in March, the offset between them shifts by an hour. Japan, China, India, and Southeast Asia don’t observe DST at all. Use a tool that handles this.
Scheduling over lunch or end-of-day. 12:30 PM technically falls within business hours, but you may be booking someone’s lunch or catching them logging off.
Calendar set to the wrong timezone. If you traveled recently and your laptop auto-adjusted, double-check your calendar’s timezone before creating events.
Burning your only overlap slot on non-urgent items. If you share just a 1-hour window, protect it for things that genuinely need live discussion.
8. Let Carly Handle the Timezone Math
Carly automates all of this. Tell it “schedule a call with David, he’s in London” — Carly checks both calendars, finds times within working hours in both zones, converts everything, and handles the back-and-forth until the meeting is booked.
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