It’s impossible to be 100 percent productive 100 percent of the time. Your brain needs a break. You need to eat lunch. You need to be personally available to others.
That being said, American workers and leaders waste a lot of time at work. Here’s a look at a few facts and figures:
Business owners and their leaders reported wasting more than 21 hours per week.
- 8 hours per week doing work that can (and should!) be done by someone else
- 1 hour per week in a wasteful meeting
- 9 hours per week on mental health breaks like social media
- 4 hours per week on low-value emails
- 2 hours per week on low-value interruptions
- 8 hours per week on low-value requests from co-workers
- 8 hours per week putting out preventable fires
Yikes! That’s more than half a traditional workweek. What about employees who are not in leadership positions?
- 30% of employees are so stressed about money it interrupts focus and productivity
- The average American worker reports wasting 3 hours per day at work including
- Internet surfing
- Socializing with co-workers
- Spacing out
- Applying for other jobs
- 60% of online purchases are made during working hours
- 65% of YouTube watchers view videos between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
- 77% of Facebook users admit using it at work
- Fantasy football costs employers $10.5 billion in lost productivity
- Only 43% of American employees think their employers care about work-life balance
What about other workplace time wasters and productivity killers?
- It takes 16 minutes to refocus after handling an incoming email
- 31 hours per month are spent in unproductive meetings
- 73% of meeting attendees reported doing other work during the meeting
- The average employee is interrupted 56 times per day
- 80% of workplace interruptions are considered trivial
Productivity isn’t just about doing work for work’s sake. Being productive and feeling successful leads to higher engagement and buy-in. When you feel burned out, bored, overwhelmed, or stressed, you are more likely to disengage, procrastinate, and find ways to waste time. But you don’t have to get caught in a cycle!
When you’re feeling overwhelmed . . . break down what you have to do into bite-sized tasks.
When you feel like procrastinating . . . give yourself to permission to do the task imperfectly.
When you’re feeling bored . . . reprioritize your to-do list and tackle the boring work after something more exciting.
When you’re feeling stressed . . . take a break. Get outside and take a walk.
When you’re getting sucked into the internet . . . set a timer and call it quits when the buzzer rings.
How you and your staff tackle time wasters will be different. Allow yourself and those you work with flexibility to experiment with schedules that work best. God created us all to be unique with unique gifts. Let’s use them to his glory in the way he created us to work!
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