Working Across Timezones: The Mental Model That Prevents Scheduling Disasters

Remote teams span timezones. A team with members in San Francisco, London, and Tokyo has a 3-hour window where all three are in reasonable working hours. Miss this window and someone is in a meeting at midnight. I manage collaborations across 4+ timezones regularly, and the mistakes I made early on taught me a system that works. The overlap calculation San Francisco (PST/PDT): UTC-8 / UTC-7 London (GMT/BST): UTC+0 / UTC+1 Tokyo (JST): UTC+9 Working hours assumption: 9 AM - 6 PM local time. In winter (no DST adjustments): SF is awake: 17:00-02:00 UTC London is awake: 09:00-18:00 UTC Tokyo is awake: 00:00-09:00 UTC The three-way overlap: 00:00-02:00 UTC. That is 4-6 PM in SF, midnight-2 AM in London, 9-11 AM in Tokyo. London is asleep. No good. The realistic approach: two overlapping pairs. SF + London overlap: 17:00-18:00 UTC (9-10 AM SF, 5-6 PM London). One hour. London + Tokyo overlap: 00:00-09:00 UTC... actually 09:00 UTC is when London starts and Tokyo ends. Overlap: 09:00 UTC (9 AM