your team doesn't have too many meetings...

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👋 Welcome back to All Things Remote: weekly tips for building a better remote team.

Most remote teams don't have a workload problem.

They have a calendar problem 🤷 

In today's send:
✅ Why your team's calendar is the real productivity drain
✅ The hidden cost of back-to-back meetings in a remote team
✅ What a healthier meeting culture actually looks like in practice

I'd love to know:

Top reads this week

• How to fix your meeting culture

• What the data says about work-life balance for remote workers

• How remote work systems can improve your team's focus and output

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Remote teams talk a lot about async as the fix for overwork.

But for many teams, the bigger issue is sitting right there in the calendar.

The average remote worker spends over a third of their week in meetings !!

And whilst many are scheduled with a good reason (ie to align on tasks, to check in, to keep things moving), in a fully remote environment, a meeting-heavy calendar carries a cost that's easy to miss.

Unlike in an office, where you could glance at a document while half-listening, remote meetings demand your full screen presence. Back-to-back, that's exhausting in a way nothing else quite replicates.

The calendar that runs your team

In most remote teams, the calendar has quietly taken over as the default way of working.

Something needs a decision? Book a meeting.

A project is stalling? Book a meeting.

Someone's starting next week? Book a meeting.

The result is a team that opens their laptop in the morning, looks at their calendar, and already feels behind, before they've done a single thing.

And we don’t want that, do we?

Running a simple meeting audit typically helps remote teams cut 30–40% of their recurring meetings immediately, not because those meetings were unimportant, but because most had never been properly questioned.

What a healthier meeting culture actually looks like