The Overlap Problem
Every distributed team has the same core scheduling challenge: finding a time when enough people are available that a meeting is worthwhile. This sounds simple when you have two locations. It becomes genuinely complex when you have five, each in a different timezone, some observing daylight saving and some not.
The traditional approach—going around the table asking 'what time works for you?'—breaks down at scale. By the time you have collected availability from six cities, the information is stale and the back-and-forth has eaten more time than the meeting itself. A better approach uses a visual tool to surface the overlap instantly, then applies a simple framework to choose the best slot.
This guide walks you through both: the manual method (useful for understanding the logic) and the automated method using TimeMeet's free planner.
Step 1: List Your Cities and Their Current Offsets
Start by writing down every city where meeting participants are located, along with their current UTC offset. 'Current' is the key word—offsets change with daylight saving transitions, so check the actual offset for the meeting date, not a remembered offset from last year.
Example team: New York (ET, UTC-4 in summer), London (BST, UTC+1 in summer), Dubai (GST, UTC+4 always), Bangalore (IST, UTC+5:30 always), Singapore (SGT, UTC+8 always). Note that in this example, three of the five cities have no DST—the US and UK are the only ones whose offsets change.
Use TimeMeet's [city pages](/city) to look up the current offset for any city in seconds. The [New York](/city/newyork), [London](/city/london), [Dubai](/city/dubai), [Mumbai](/city/mumbai), and [Singapore](/city/singapore) pages all show the live current time and UTC offset.
Step 2: Map the Working Hours Across All Zones
For each city, working hours are typically 9 AM–6 PM local time. Convert these to UTC to create a common reference: New York (summer): 9 AM–6 PM ET = 1 PM–10 PM UTC. London (summer): 9 AM–6 PM BST = 8 AM–5 PM UTC. Dubai: 9 AM–6 PM GST = 5 AM–2 PM UTC. Bangalore: 9 AM–6 PM IST = 3:30 AM–12:30 PM UTC. Singapore: 9 AM–6 PM SGT = 1 AM–10 AM UTC.
Now find the intersection. The latest start (in UTC) across all cities is 1 PM UTC (New York). The earliest end is 10 AM UTC (Singapore). Since 1 PM UTC is later than 10 AM UTC, there is no window where all five cities are simultaneously within core business hours. This is the reality for many global teams.
This is where the trade-off decisions begin. If you can accept 'early for some, late for others,' you can find windows in the overlap zone. The question is: whose comfort are you willing to sacrifice, and by how much?
Step 3: Use TimeMeet to Visualize the Overlap Instantly
Doing the UTC mapping manually for five cities takes 15–20 minutes and is error-prone. TimeMeet does it in under 30 seconds. Open TimeMeet, add each city to the planner, pick your meeting date, and the color-coded timetable shows every hour rated by collective availability: green (everyone in core hours), purple (some available), orange (early/late for at least one), dark (nighttime for someone).
For the five-city example above, TimeMeet will show no green slots—but it will show purple slots in the morning UTC range where London, Dubai, and Bangalore all overlap with early New York, while Singapore is in the late afternoon. These are your least-bad options.
Click any slot to see the exact local time in each city. If 9 AM New York (1 PM UTC) gives you London 2 PM, Dubai 5 PM, Bangalore 6:30 PM, and Singapore 9 PM, you can make an informed choice: that timing works reasonably for four of five cities, with Singapore taking the late slot this week.
Step 4: Apply the Fairness Framework
Once you have identified two or three candidate slots, apply the fairness framework to choose between them. Score each slot for each participant: 0 points for core hours, 1 point for early/late (before 8 AM or after 7 PM), 3 points for antisocial hours (before 6 AM or after 9 PM). Choose the slot with the lowest total score.
More importantly, track the scores over time. If Singapore consistently scores 3 points (joining at 9 PM) while New York consistently scores 0, the rotation is unfair. Alternate monthly: one month Singapore takes the 9 PM slot, the next month New York takes a 7 AM slot and Singapore joins at a more reasonable hour.
Document the rotation in a shared spreadsheet or team handbook. Transparency about the rotation—even when the distribution is imperfect—builds more trust than a system that appears arbitrary.
Step 5: Set Up the Meeting Infrastructure
Once the slot is chosen, use timezone-safe infrastructure to formalize it. Send a calendar invite with the meeting time set in a specific IANA timezone (e.g., 'America/New_York'), not a fixed UTC offset. Invite attendees' calendars will automatically display the correct local time for each person.
In the calendar description, include the time in all relevant zones: '9:00 AM ET / 2:00 PM BST / 5:00 PM GST / 6:30 PM IST / 9:00 PM SGT.' This one line prevents every no-show caused by timezone confusion. Include a TimeMeet link so anyone who is unsure can verify the conversion themselves.
Review the meeting time before every DST transition (typically early March, late March, and late October). A five-minute check twice a year prevents months of accumulated confusion. Use TimeMeet's planner to confirm the slot still works after the transition, and send a calendar update if anything has shifted.
When No Overlap Exists: The Async Alternative
Sometimes there genuinely is no workable synchronous overlap. A team spanning New York and Auckland (12–13 hours apart) has no business-hours overlap at all. In these cases, the right answer is not to force a bad meeting—it is to embrace asynchronous workflows.
Async does not mean slower. A well-structured asynchronous review cycle—where the New York team posts a decision document by 5 PM, Auckland reviews and comments by their 9 AM (which is New York's previous evening), and New York incorporates feedback by their morning—can complete a decision loop in 24 hours without anyone staying late.
For the moments when you absolutely must meet live, pick the least-bad slot, keep it under 30 minutes, record it, and share the recording with a written summary within one hour. TimeMeet's [Auckland city page](/city/auckland) and [New York city page](/city/newyork) can help you identify the window that minimizes total inconvenience for both cities.