12 Biggest Time Wasters at Work And Real Solutions

Do you know what is one of the main reasons why you are not as productive as you would like at work?

Time wasters.

The average worker wastes 60 hours every month due to workplace distractions, with over 79% of workers feeling distracted during a workday.

There are hundreds of ways to waste your time, but these twelve work time wasters are definitely the most common; it is essential that you know them, to change your habits and increase your productivity.

In this article, you’ll find the biggest time wasters and how to avoid them, so you can finally get your work done and feel accomplished, instead of being nervous and unsatisfied.

In the past, I have always been a person who has difficulty concentrating and the best at wasting my time, only to realize my mistakes and work hard to avoid all these distractions.

It’s time to change your habits and take back control of your time!

Key Takeaways

• Identifying and reducing the common workplace time wasters is essential to maximizing efficiency in the workplace.
• Setting boundaries for what an employee will and won’t do can help manage unreasonable colleague expectations without offending them.
• Establishing clear rules about expectations helps establish a trust-based management strategy that enables efficient processes while freeing employees to engage in more meaningful goals like customer service or innovative solutions that drive success.

12 Common Time Wasters at Work

Interruptions, meetings that don’t have agendas, automated tasks that are done manually, and social media can all interfere with the productivity of an organization.

Discovering these common workplace time-wasters is essential in boosting efficiency.

Interruptions

Interruptions are probably one of the biggest time wasters at work, and I absolutely hate them.

According to survey, the average worker was interrupted or switched tasks every 11 minutes.

This frequent shifting of focus means it takes you an additional 25 minutes (or more) to return your attention to whatever you were initially working on.

The sheer volume of notifications we are exposed to has been linked to mental fatigue and lack of concentration.

Being bombarded with emails, phone calls, chimes, pings, and alerts all throughout the day makes it nearly impossible for us not to become distracted and leads us further away from our main task at hand.

Unnecessary meetings

How many times have you opened your calendar and remembered that you have a meeting coming up soon?

Unfortunately, most of them are really useless.

A  survey by RescueTime found that around one in three employees consider their attendance at certain meetings to be completely redundant and a time-waster.

This often leads to costly lost billable hours, decreased employee morale, and delayed project timelines.

To minimize the waste of time in unproductive meetings, you should use tools like Doodle or Calendly for efficient meeting scheduling with clear agendas sent out ahead of time.

Additionally, it’s important to only include necessary participants who can provide value and offer meaningful contributions.

A strategy I often use is to set a maximum time in order to not spend too much time in meetings and distract my colleagues too much.

Repetitive tasks

Repetitive tasks are one of the most typical time wasters at work, draining focus and costing businesses valuable time.

Some examples of these repetitive tasks? Manual data entry, managing customer information, or analyzing data manually.

 Identifying these types of assignments that waste a lot of time early on is essential as they add little value to workflow and typically resist attempts to automate them away with technology.

By automating simple yet repetitive actions where possible, you can decrease employee strain while being effective with your time.

It also helps you stay focused on your work and increases workplace productivity, which is extremely important to improve your performance. 

We live in the AI era, so it shouldn’t be difficult to stop spending excessive time on these tasks using specific tools, whatever you need to do!

Micromanaging

Micromanagement is the opposite of delegation, which is a great way to increase productivity.

With micromanaging, employees are constantly monitored, leading to feelings of mistrust and lack of autonomy that can be damaging to engagement and motivation.

I’ve worked in several companies with this approach, and I can assure you that they destroy your productivity and leave you feeling stressed and dissatisfied.

Not to mention that micromanaging often results in unnecessary repetition of tasks or processes that waste a lot of time at work.

This is because it does not allow people to manage themselves independently and develop accountability, making them inclined to procrastinate and waste time at work.

Multitasking

You’ve probably always been told that multitasking is an exceptional skill that everyone should develop, but it can ultimately impede productivity and cost you precious time.

 It’s been proven that the human brain is limited when juggling simultaneous tasks, resulting in what psychologists call “task switching.”

This happens when we try to focus on more than one task at once leading to wasting time trying to do too many things.

Multitasking is often perceived as being productive, however this could be an illusion of efficiency rather than real progress.

Doing multiple tasks simultaneously wastes your time and depletes your attentional resources, leaving you feeling mentally exhausted after just doing basic tasks.

To maximize work productivity, focusing on one task at a time is better than jumping around from one project to another.

Disorganization

Having an organized workspace can make a significant difference in the efficiency and productivity of any individual or workgroup.

Without efficient systems in place, tasks that should otherwise be simple become time-consuming and difficult.

Disorganization not only leads to time wasted trying to locate important documents, but can also cause increased stress levels for those involved.

Deadlines are more likely to slip as it takes longer than necessary sifting through cluttered paperwork in order to find what is needed.

Furthermore, errors that cost valuable additional time may occur if files or emails are overlooked during the clutter’s sorting process.

Doing other people’s work

Whether it’s a colleague asking for favors or taking on extra tasks that are technically someone else’s responsibility, this can take up a lot of your time and resources.

Not only does it leave you with less opportunity to focus on your own assigned tasks, but the quality of your work may suffer due to missed deadlines or insufficient attention spent on essential details.

I know you feel bad when you say “no”, but you can’t solve your colleagues’ problems.

This will lead them to procrastinate and not take responsibility, so don’t feel guilty when you politely tell them “I’m sorry, but I can’t take care of it”

Establishing clear rules about what you will and won’t do can help prevent people from making unreasonable demands of you and you’ll be more productive at work.

Social media distractions

At work, phone distractions can be a major time waster.

We all tend to check our favorite sites multiple times throughout the day, and we often end up wasting precious minutes or even hours of productivity in these activities.

One quick break to scroll through newsfeeds can easily stretch into an hour if you’re not careful.

Not only does this waste your time and effort, but it can also lead to poor quality results on projects due to distracted thinking and missed deadlines.

Fortunately, there are techniques you can use to reduce time wasters like these within the workplace.

For example, you could use apps to block social media or focus apps to avoid wasting time in useless activities that lead to nothing helpful.

Chatty coworkers

Whether you work in a big multinational company or in a small office, you’ll always find a chatty coworker who loves wasting time during the day.

When you’re in the middle of a project and suddenly faced with conversations that can pull your attention away from your task, it’s easy to slip unintentionally into time-wasting activities.

In fact, researchers suggest that innocent interruptions from colleagues can result in a loss of up to five hours per week when not appropriately addressed!

Balancing social interactions with the need for focused work is essential to avoid getting drawn into the conversation treadmill as a time-waster.

Procrastination

When you procrastinate too much, getting things done is almost impossible.

Procrastination often consists of time-wasting activities such as watching an online video, having a lengthy chat with your work colleague, or taking a more extended break than necessary.

Such activities steal valuable productive time away from essential tasks that need to be done during the workday.

To curb these tendencies, you must understand why you procrastinate and implement strategies for overcoming them while building up self-accountability whenever possible.

Digital self-distractions

Online distractions, while often overlooked, are among the most insidious and common time-wasters at work. 

These activities range from checking forums and news sites to scrolling through social media feeds or engaging in online games for entertainment.

While it may seem harmless for us to take a few minutes each day on these activities, the cumulative effect can be significant and you will find yourself having wasted a lot of precious time.

Once again, you should find ways to avoid them, like using focus apps or blocking certain websites during working hours.

Allowing ourselves well-timed breaks throughout the day with no phone access is also essential; taking this short break can improve our focus before returning to whatever task was already underway before the interruption.

Too many coffees

As a good Italian that I am, I have always drunk a lot of coffee. Or rather, I did it before I realized how much time was wasted.

And if you smoke, then time is even more wasted.

I’m not saying not to drink coffee during the day, but when it gets to 5 or 6 a day, then it can also become harmful to your health.

How to Avoid Time Wasters

If you want to waste less time and reach your goals faster, you need to change your habits.

Here are some tips that I put into practice every day and that allow me to save time to dedicate to important activities.

Stay focused and avoid distractions

Distractions are everywhere, and our attention span is getting lower and lower; it’s time to get it back.

Activities like checking your phone, checking social media, or answering emails constantly can create mental fatigue that can cause a decrease in focus and lead to wasted time.

Focus is indispensable when it comes to improving productivity and time management, so you need to use some strategies that will help you overcome these bad habits.

For instance, focus apps are a great ally in blocking useless websites and overcoming common distractions, as well as reading motivational quotes to stay focused and find the motivation needed.

Instead of wasting time, you’ll feel more concentrated and productive, which is essential to smash your goals.

Create a to-do list

Do you already know what to do during the day? What are the most important tasks?

Make a schedule or a checklist of what you need to do, so you can set time for each activity.

Even a simple app like Todoist, which I use every day, will allow you to manage your time better, a skill that will improve more and more over time.

Track and analyze your time

Tracking and analyzing your time at work helps you to identify patterns, make adjustments, become more aware of how you spend each day or week, and find ways to stay focused on critical tasks.

For example, if you can track your time spent working on a specific task or project, you will be able to create a to-do list more easily, as you will know how much it takes you to carry out a certain activity.

Develop self-accountability

Taking accountability means taking responsibility for completing a task, without making excuses or blaming someone else.

It’s one of the main skills of a leader, and it will allow you to stop wasting time at work.

Why? Knowing you’re responsible for a certain task or project means you can’t afford to waste time.

And to stick to time limits, you must keep yourself away from distractions, whether you want to or not.

Focus on developing self-accountability, and you’ll be able to recognize time wasters in the workplace and stay away from them.

Learn to say ” no”

Learning how to confidently say “no” is an essential skill for anyone who wishes to increase their productivity and quality of work.

Taking on too many projects or duties can consume a lot of time and put you in the position of being unable to meet deadlines while attempting excessive multitasking.

Saying “no” allows you establish limits that better reflect your working hours or capabilities in order to produce higher-quality results without feeling overwhelmed by unnecessary stress.

The Cost of Time Wasters

We all know that we waste our time at work, but many are unaware of the consequences of this behavior.

Curious to discover them?

Lost billable hours

When workers lose time that could otherwise be used towards tasks or projects, financial costs develop in missed opportunities for work and business operations.

A study by CIO Insight found that businesses waste about $1.8 trillion annually on repetitive tasks.

This is partly due to the difficulty in finding valuable ways to spend time at work, such as studying industry trends or cultivating relationships with clients and partners.

And if you are a freelancer, you should know that you are losing precious money doing useless activities that harm your productivity!

Decreased productivity

When you keep getting distracted, it’s difficult to stay focused and productive.

And obviously, this also affects your performance, but also your mood, and your self-esteem.

This is why it is important to be disciplined and work hard to stop constantly distracting yourself.

Delayed projects

Time wasters cost time (obviously), but that means you risk being late with your deadlines, especially when you’re in a pinch.

All of this leads to less trust from your team, more stress and anxiety, and lower self-esteem.

And obviously, this will lead you to procrastinate more and more, focusing on useless activities rather than completing your tasks.

Conclusion

If you really want to improve your work routine, you need to identify and eliminate potential time wasters both from you and your team.

Learning good time management techniques, such as creating a schedule or checklist, can help avoid distractions and procrastination.

If you, like me, struggle with focusing for long periods of time, you should absolutely try focusing apps, to stay concentrated and get used to not getting distracted while working.

Most of these time wasters seem harmless to you, but at the end of the day, you realize that you have wasted a lot of time without any benefit to your productivity.

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating these bad habits, but start changing your routine now!