I think you hit the nail on the head. 30 productive hours is a 60 hour workweek once you add in all the useless meetings. On a 18 month SAP implementation I was doing 70 hous a week for 18 months including 3AM calls with India 4-5 days a week. Totally fried me. It is interesting though, now that I'm working independently and change my standard rate for meetings, the number of meetings has gone way down.