How to Set Meeting Times When Everyone’s in a Different Time Zone

If you’ve ever tried to book a call with someone in three different countries, you know the pain. What’s a totally normal 10am for you might be someone’s dinner time, and someone else’s middle of the night. Get it wrong once and you’ll spend the rest of the week apologizing and rescheduling.

Here’s how to actually make this work, without the back-and-forth headache.

Figure out your overlap hours first

Before you even think about a specific time, map out when your team’s work hours actually overlap. If you’ve got someone in the US, someone in Australia, and someone in the Philippines, there’s usually a small window where everyone is awake and working. Find that window first. Everything else builds from there.

Sometimes the overlap is tiny, like an hour or two. That’s fine. You don’t need a big window, you just need to know exactly where it is.

Use a tool that shows all the time zones at once, not just yours

Trying to do this math in your head is how mistakes happen. Something like World Time Buddy or the time zone view in Google Calendar lets you see everyone’s local time side by side. Pick the slot, and everyone can literally see what time it is for them before agreeing to it.

Don’t just say “let’s meet at 3pm” without saying whose 3pm you mean. That one habit alone prevents most scheduling mix-ups.

Rotate the inconvenient time slot

If there’s genuinely no time that works well for everyone, at least be fair about who has to sacrifice. If the AU team always gets the late call and the US team always gets the convenient one, that adds up over time and people notice. Rotating who takes the early morning or late night slot keeps things from feeling one-sided.

Confirm the time zone, every single time

Even with a great system, mix-ups happen, especially around Daylight Saving. The US and Australia don’t switch their clocks on the same schedule (and the Philippines doesn’t observe Daylight Saving at all), so a meeting that worked perfectly in March can suddenly be an hour off in November. Always double-check and confirm before the call, not the day after someone missed it.

Don’t be afraid to go async

Not every conversation needs a live meeting. If the only common time is genuinely painful for someone, ask whether this actually needs to happen in real time. A recorded update, a shared doc, or a quick voice message can often replace a meeting that would otherwise force someone to wake up at 5am.

The Takeaway

Scheduling across time zones will never be completely painless, but it doesn’t have to be a guessing game either. Know your overlap hours, use a tool that shows everyone’s time at once, and be fair about who takes the harder slot. Do that consistently, and meetings stop being something your team dreads.