True, when I was contracting I did attend less meetings although it always felt like too many and the pay was good (not so much now).

But I always found it a little bit of a lie when the idea of a contractor coming in and working on a problem from day 2 or 3.

Granted this usually was because the problem was poorly defined and/or limited but even when I joined teams that had really good project managers it still was not as simple as "work on this in isolation".

I have since ditched contracting in UK, too much of a mess with the taxman.