11 Common Time Wasters in the Workplace And How To Avoid Them

One of the biggest challenges of running a business or managing a team is dealing with time wasters. They make you feel as though you are working assiduously hard but at the end of the day, you have nothing to show for your labor. 

A good example of these time wasters is unnecessary meetings. You spend hours on end with your team in meetings polishing a marketing plan that’s already good enough, without even realizing you are wasting your work hours. 

Left unchecked, these time-wasting activities can erode your productivity, take a toll on your health, and, in extreme cases, lead to failure in business or career. 

Thankfully, these time-wasting habits can be dealt with squarely if you decide to. But you must be able to identify them in the first place to put up a good fight. 

In this post, we will explore the 11 most common time wasters in the workplace and give you insights for dealing with them decisively. Let’s get things rolling!

Key Takeaways

• Unnecessary meetings and unproductive activities in the workplace can significantly waste time, resulting in decreased productivity and potential business or career failure.
• Recognizing these time-wasting habits is crucial to effectively combating them and enhancing overall productivity.

11 Biggest Time Wasters in The WorkPlace

You would be surprised that the things that steal your valuable time – and that of your employees – at work aren’t what you think.

I know you may be thinking that your employees are watching movies and playing video games during work hours. Yes, they do consume some of your time, but they are not the only major time-wasters to be cautious of. Here is the complete list:

1. Unnecessary and Irrelevant Meetings 

Team meetings are the best thing that happened in the workplace since sliced bread. They allow you and your team to keep up with ongoing projects and monitor every facet of your business. 

But did you know that these meetings, when allowed to run haywire, can be your very own undoing?  Unfortunately, this is the sad reality at many workplaces. 

A particular study found that on average employees spend up to 33% of their workweek on meetings. This gives you a fair idea of the precious time we spend on meetings. 

As you would expect, 50% of the time, these meetings yield very little positive outcomes. Keep in mind that these statistics apply to both physical and remote workplaces. 

Does that mean we are advocating that you scrap all your meetings altogether? Not by a long shot! On the contrary, what we are saying is that you should find a way to streamline your workplace meetings, cutting off the unnecessary ones. 

Other proactive steps you can take to ensure your meetings are efficient and productive are as follows: 

• Leverage an AI Scheduling Assistant to manage your meeting schedules
• Resist the allure of holding a meeting when the urge hits. Stick to a strict meeting schedule of once (or max twice) a week.
• Have a clearly defined agenda before going into any meeting
• Ensure that only the key people in your team are invited to your meetings
• Set an estimated time for every meeting. 
• Ensure that resolutions from previous meetings are executed before going into the next one. This will help keep all stakeholders accountable.
• Avoid unproductive meetings at all cost

2. Email Overload 

Did you know that the average workplace person receives about 120 emails daily? That’s a lot of emails!

On the surface, this might not look like much of a problem because most times those emails are ignored. But when you think about the amount of time we spend on the few emails we open and how many productive hours such actions take away from us, you will realize just how time-wasting email overload is. 

How much time do we spend at the workplace sifting through emails? A study by McKinsey suggests that employees spend as much as 28% of their workweek managing emails. 

This is solid proof that unfettered emailing among your team can steal away valuable time.  

What can you do about it? 

Begin by encouraging them to declutter their inboxes, the reason being that a full inbox steals an average of 27 minutes of our time every day. This is because having a full inbox entices us to revisit old emails from time to time, which is time wasting. Plus, it can lead to missed opportunities. 

There was a time when I missed an important mail from the government, which resulted in me failing to pay a tax bill on time. This mistake had serious consequences for me. I had always been diligent about managing my inbox, but on that particular day, I neglected to check my emails thoroughly. As a result, I completely overlooked the government’s notification about the impending tax bill. 

A few weeks later, I received a notice stating that I had missed the deadline for payment and that penalties would be imposed. I felt a sense of regret and frustration for not being more attentive to my emails. This incident taught me the importance of staying organized and paying attention to every email, especially when it comes to matters as significant as taxes. 

From that day forward, I made it a priority to regularly check my inbox and set up reminders to ensure I never miss any important communication from the government. Remember, being proactive and staying on top of your emails can save you from unnecessary stress and financial consequences.

Another proactive step I have taken is implementing email filters to sort out important emails from the rest. In addition, I use apps like Unroll.Me to unsubscribe from irrelevant newsletters and clean my inbox. 

I suggest you also try these strategies. You will thank me later. 

3. Social Media

Arguably the biggest time waster of the 21st century, nothing steals our precious time as much as social media does. In fact, we should have listed it first here, only that this list was curated in no particular order. 

How much valuable time does social media take away from the workplace? Let’s take a look at some stats. 

According to Zippia, on average, US employees spend 2.9 hours out of their 8-hour work period on non-work related activities, of which social media gets 2.5 hours. This sort gives you an idea of how much time your employees spend on social media. 

And if you think that’s a minor problem that can be overlooked, think again. Business News Daily postulates that American businesses lose north of $650 billion due to employees being distracted at work. You don’t need to be a math guru to figure out that social media-induced distraction has the lion’s share of that money. 

How can you help your team stay focused and avoid social media as much as possible? 

Implement strict policies on smartphone usage at the workplace, if possible. You can take things further by asking them to mute their social media notifications. Or do away with their mobile devices during work hours.

In addition, reward employees for timely task completion and make them see value in getting the job done rather than coming to work. 

4. Multitasking 

We love to tell ourselves that we are capable of doing multiple things at a time. While it’s possible, the ugly truth is that doing so scarcely makes us more productive. 

The reason is simple: the human brain wasn’t designed to seamlessly switch between multiple tasks at a time. Attempting to do so will only cause chaos in the mind, making it hard for one to stay focused on a task to see it successfully to the end. 

Another reason multitasking is a bad idea in the workplace is because studies have shown that it takes about 23 minutes to fully refocus on a task when you make a switch. That’s 23 minutes wasted! Imagine if the switch is made 10 times a day.

So, by all means, discourage the habit of multitasking among your team. 

5. Interruptions 

Just like multitasking, interruptions make it hard to focus long enough on a task for fruitful outcomes. And it comes in many forms. 

It can come in the form of buzzing social media notifications that get our attention off the job at hand. It can come in the form of meaningless chattering from a colleague at work or unplanned meetings.

Worse, it can come from an unwillingness to work. 

Whatever form it comes, interruptions are a bad omen in the workplace. 

To combat these interruptions, encourage your employees to create a DND (do not disturb) setup for themselves during peak work hours. This might require putting their smartphones on flight mode or hanging a DND tag on their work desks. 

6. Disorganization 

If interruption is the mother of time-wasting in the workplace, disorganization is the father of it! 

The truth is that a disorganized workspace or schedule is tantamount to unproductivity at work. This is because when one’s workspace is disorganized, finding important stuff when needed will take forever, leading to excessive time wasting. 

In the same vein, a cluttered work schedule makes organizing one’s day a challenge, making it hard to prioritize tasks for maximum efficiency. 

If you have noticed that disorganization has dealt a big blow to your team’s productivity level, encourage them to declutter their workspaces and calendars as much as they can. Doing so will not will not only help minimize time-wasting but also supercharge productivity. 

7. Doing Other People’s Work 

At first, doing other people’s work can come off as a noble thing to do at work. But when you think about the repercussions, you will see otherwise. 

Doing other people’s work means having less time to do yours. In fact, doing other people’s work can make you feel as though you’ve done a lot of work for the day, sapping away the zeal and motivation to do yours. 

Another ugly repercussion that comes with doing other people’s work is that it leads to complacency in the workplace. When people know they can get someone else to do their work, they will have no reason to want to put in their best. 

So, if you can, discourage your employees from doing other people’s work. If possible, penalize the act. 

Now, this is not to say that all forms of doing other people’s work should be completely discouraged. There are times when a colleague is indisposed due to illness or life crisis. Exceptions should be made in such instances. 

8. Procrastination 

Christopher Parker once said:

Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s fun until you get the bill.

In other words, procrastinating on tasks seems to be the most convenient option until the consequences of it come to bear. 

One of the reasons why procrastination looks very attractive is because we somehow convince ourselves that we can perform all the tasks we’ve put off at a later time in one fell swoop. But this is hardly the reality. 

To begin with, accumulating tasks and attempting to work on all of them at once will require multitasking, which as you know already hardly leads to fruitful outcomes. Secondly, procrastinating on tasks, in most cases, overwhelms us into doing nothing. 

Overall, procrastination is detrimental in all its forms and should be actively combated.

So, how can you win the fight against procrastination? Maybe my approach will inspire you. 

As an online business owner battling with ADHD, I found myself procrastinating a lot of times on important tasks. It’s not like I wanted to, but my health challenge didn’t make my life easy. 

After several failed attempts to conquer procrastination, I finally found a simple strategy that worked! And that was breaking down tasks into small, manageable segments. For better results, I used Google Calendar to create visual aids that allowed me to focus on the tasks I had at hand. 

I still use this strategy to this day, and it still works. So, I suggest you give it a try. 

Another proactive step you can take is fostering a supportive environment for your team. You’d be surprised how this simple technique can turn your lot around for good. 

9. Over-Reporting or Micromanagement 

If you are a meticulous kind of boss who loves to keep things super organized, there is a good chance you will make your employees write and submit reports on virtually everything. 

While this reporting can make it easy to accurately track and manage your operations efficiently, it can also lead to time wasting. This is because creating those reports takes time, no matter how brief they are.

Micromanagement is also one of the biggest time wasters in the workplace, but most often goes unnoticed. It happens when managers and business owners deny their team the liberty of performing assigned tasks using their discretion. 

When this happens, people will be forced to wait to receive instructions before taking on an assignment, leading to avoidable time wasting. 

In summary, as a boss, ask for reports from your employees only when it is absolutely needed. Resist the urge to micromanage. 

10. Lack of Delegation 

Failure to delegate tasks to the appropriate persons at work can lead to dilly-dallying, which eats into our time. 

This is because when there is no clear definition of who is responsible for what, people will pass up on important tasks, only to come back to them after a lot of time has been wasted. To this end, it’s important to put effort into delegating tasks correctly. 

Efficient delegation starts with defining tasks and outlining who is responsible for them. When in doubt, encourage your team to reach out for clarification. 

11. Excessive Breaks 

This one is a no-brainer. Taking breaks at the slightest drop of the hat is a big time killer. 

Breaks are great as they help us recharge at work. But taking them excessively will never amount to anything meaningful, and so should be avoided at all costs.

This boils down to cultivating self-discipline. Make your employees see the negative impact excessive breaks have on your business and encourage them to discipline themselves enough not to indulge in them. 

You might not see results right off the gate, but with time, your efforts will eventually pay off. 

Final Thoughts 

So there you have it. We have discussed 11 common time-wasting activities that can hinder productivity in the workplace.

As a business owner or manager, it is crucial to take action and implement strategies to minimize these activities and boost efficiency within your team or organization. By doing so, you can maximize productivity and achieve better results.