Last week I had 40 work hours and about 25 of it were spent in various meetings, talks, and so on. This has become commonplace and I think it is time to fight back. I think the company needs think a little bit about whether they hired programmers or meeting-listeners.

Note, these meetings are about things which are mostly irrelevant for me. It is also a very typical that a meeting written out as 15 min or a half hour will be elongated to 1.5 or 2 hours.

Sometimes there are meetings which are not written out, but we still need to be there.

Note, it is paid work time, so if the Company wants to pay me for sitting in on irrelevant meetings, it is up to them, and I will do it. However, I still see a grave danger. And this danger is, while I am at a meeting, I can not work. And a boss/lead will once ask, what the heck did I do?

And, I want to show him, what I did.

I want to show my calendar. On that, it is very well visible, what I did. Note, my calendar is public (anybody can see the content in it with the details).

My idea is this:

**What is in the shared calendar, I extend it in my private calendar with the reality.**

On this way, I use my calendar effectively as a log, where I note, how much and on which meetings did I take part. I give them a different color. I do this with 2 goals:

1. As a precautionary maneuver, if someone (likely one of those who create the meetings) questions us about the cause of our work being slow. Then I will be able to quickly and reliably show him why.

2. Others who open my calendar, will see the amount of the really wasted time, and not only the planned ones.

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However, I think this is at least a little bit threatening to our wonderful meeting-generator co-workers. But I am not sure, exactly how. They had the authority to create the meetings, and they did. Then they should not "break the mirror".

This is a small company in Germany.

So, how good idea is it? Did other do the same, and what were the results?