Best Time to Chat With Someone on Another Continent

Sooner or later you'll end up talking to someone on the other side of the planet, and the first practical problem won't be language. It'll be the clock. Your lunch is their midnight. Your Friday night is already their Saturday morning.

The good news is that you only need one number to sort most of it out.

Start with the gap, not the clock

Every place sits a certain number of hours ahead of or behind UTC, the world's reference time. Forget the individual offsets and just work out the difference between you and the person you're talking to.

Take two people: Ana in Mexico City and Kenji in Tokyo. Tokyo is UTC+9. Mexico City is UTC−6, and since Mexico dropped daylight saving time in 2022, that one doesn't move. The gap is fifteen hours. When it's 9 pm for Kenji, it's 6 am for Ana, on the same calendar day. Neither of them is getting a relaxed evening chat out of that without someone bending their schedule.

Europe and the Americas: the easy one

If you're in Europe and your friend is in North or South America, the maths works in your favour. Your evening is their afternoon. Eight in the evening in Warsaw is early afternoon in New York and around lunchtime in Mexico City. Both of you are awake, fed and not yet too tired to be interesting.

Europe and Asia: use the morning

Flip it for Asia. Mid-morning in Europe is already late afternoon in Japan and early afternoon in India. Ten in the morning in Warsaw is around 5 pm in Tokyo. For India, remember that it runs on a half-hour offset, so the same moment is about 1:30 or 2:30 pm depending on the season.

Americas and Asia: someone stays up

This is the hard pairing, and the honest answer is that one of you will be tired. The best you can do is evening in the Americas against morning in Asia. Seven in the evening in New York is 8 am the next morning in Tokyo. It works, but only just, and it works better on weekends.

The clock changes that mess everything up

Europe, the US and Australia all change their clocks, but on different dates, and Australia does it in the opposite season. So for a few weeks each spring and autumn, the gap between you and a friend shifts by an hour. If "same time as last week" suddenly feels wrong, that's probably why.

Plenty of places don't change their clocks at all. Japan, India and China stay put all year, which makes them easier to plan around.

Small habits that save a lot of confusion

• Say the city, not "my time". "8 pm Warsaw time" can't be misread. "8 pm my time" forces the other person to guess.
• Ask "what time is it there right now?" It's a decent opener, and the answer is often a story. Someone eating breakfast while you're heading to bed is interesting in itself.
• Don't assume the weekend matches. Friday night in Europe is already Saturday morning in Australia. In Israel, most people work Sunday to Thursday, so their weekend starts when yours is mid-week.
• Don't expect instant replies. A message that arrives at 3 am your time isn't ignored when you answer it at breakfast. That's just how this works.

Check before you plan

When you're setting a time for something specific, like a voice chat, check it with a world clock rather than doing it in your head. The one below shows what time it is around the world right now.