As I get older I find it quite energy draining to meet with people while staying on top my game. How many hours meeting or pairing with other people do have on an average day? What is considered healthy?
> As I get older I find it quite energy draining to meet with people
In a typical day 0–2 hours of meetings working as a developer independent contractor. I don't count occasional DMing on Slack in that figure.
I think this might be more personality-based than age-related. I'm in my mid-20s and have similar feelings about most meetings. The kind of meetings I like and that are really productive for me are short, for a purpose (there are explicit questions one side has for the other), and with a small number of attendees, for me it's typically 1–3. Working with people you really like to be around I think helps as well.
2. I escape most thanks to a chronic pain condition, meaning sitting in a meeting just doesn't work.
Which means I can get so much more done, that sit there debating "no, we don't want 6 pop up modals as soon as someone arrives at the website" for a solid hour.
However, I do work with someone else who does the meetings, and we have constant back and forth for the whole day.
My current team is glorious: 1 hour every other week.
I've been on teams that average 3 hours per day. Honestly I'd bring a laptop and work through them. If there's that much information to distribute, I probably don't care about most of it.
I like to have at most 1 hour of meeting/talking with people time per day and at least 12 hours devoted to work, study, and research. I find this is a sensible balance that allows me to stay on top of my tasks.
