What is *the best* time zone for global work and Zoom?

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and my answer is Ireland and the UK (Portugal too).  Excerpt:

West Coast meetings are trickier. But if you don’t take any past 2 p.m., they’re still manageable. Keep in mind that a lot of technology types start their day at 7 a.m. or earlier, precisely because they are trying to more closely match East Coast hours. So the nominal time difference might be eight hours, but due to work norms you get about an hour and a half of that back, leading to what is in effect a six-and-a-half-hour time difference between your Cotswolds chateau and that conference room in Seattle.

And:

I, for one, prefer to be working in the British time zone, even though most of my commitments are on U.S. East Coast time. For one thing, I have mornings largely to myself. Emails have accumulated while I slept, but there is little pressure to answer most of them right away. Americans on the East Coast are sleeping; if they’re on the West Coast, they will soon be preparing for bed.

Call it an illusion if you wish. But sitting in Dublin with my computer, it feels like I am several hours ahead of everybody else. By the time the email and meeting onslaughts arrive, I’ve already gotten a lot done.

And if you believe in “money illusion,” you might not like that half hour trick they pull in India.  As a side note, you might wish to consider the times global chess tournaments are held (often starting 10 or 11 a.m. EST), or for that matter when pre-written MR posts pop up in the morning, namely between midnight and three a.m. EST.  You will again see a lot of catering to what I view as “the dominant time zone,” that of London.

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