In 2014, the “Wasting Time at Work” Annual Survey conducted by Salary.com revealed that 89% of workers said they wasted time at work every day. Seventy-eight percent of those said they wasted between a half an hour to two hours each day.
For an annual salary of $60K, that’s up to $15,000, which is the value of the time lost that could have been spent more productively. It represents up to 25% of the total salary—wasted.
The same findings appeared in 2017, when OfficeTeam, a Robert Half company, surveyed professionals and found that “the average employee could be wasting more than 8 hours per work week on activities unrelated to the job.”
Through 2020 and the pandemic, and into 2021, surveys and studies continued to show estimates of how much time is lost in a typical workday, where it goes, and what it costs employees, as well as the companies for which they work.
Many reports reveal some of the same culprits, such as the Internet, distractions, gossiping, texting, personal calls, and social media. Other reports zero in on specific issues that affect time, such as meetings and searching for information.
I started thinking about the many ways time is lost in a professional workday that DO NOT appear in surveys and reports.
Many professionals STILL practice OLD methods for managing their day that SEEM to be the right things to do, but they’re not. And they don’t realize they’re wasting time they can’t afford to lose.
If you are also engaging in a few of the most popular, age-old practices for managing tasks, you may be losing time as well.
Here are two classic examples of advice that is STILL circulating and will surely STEAL time from your workday if you follow it.
- “Write down everything that needs to be done, starting with everything from yesterday or today that you didn’t accomplish.”
- “Spend time on weekly planning sessions; update and move items over [from the long-term task list] to the short-term task list; review any other resources you use to track tasks.”
I’ve seen recommendations to spend anywhere from 10-30 minutes to write a to-do list EVERY morning in an attempt to plan the day. As for weekly planning, I’ve seen recommendations to spend anywhere from 10-30 minutes on a Monday or a Friday to plan the week coming up.
If you’re spending that kind of time creating daily to-do lists on paper and/or you’re spending it on weekly planning, would you like to have that time back?
Tasks Cannot Effectively be Managed While They’re STILL Sitting at Their Source.
Using the bits of ‘expert’ advice from earlier, there’s a lot of reviewing, regrouping and rewriting of to-do lists going on. You must continuously check for new tasks that have appeared, determine what has been completed or not completed, identify what hasn’t received your attention, and see if there’s anything that has spun out of control.
You’re required to revisit the email Inbox to see what you flagged, scan the desk to review papers and files sitting there as reminders of things to do, review post-it notes and meeting notes, and more. Then you must compare all of these tasks with what’s on your paper to-do list or in your planner, and then try to figure out what to do next.
The most popular, age-old TOOLS that are still used for managing tasks are on paper: legal pads, spiral pads, steno pads, notebooks, post-it notes and planners. But there are many SOURCES of tasks in your workday: the email inbox, voicemail, meetings, hallway conversations, social media, the papers and files on your desk, and more. There are actually more than TEN different sources of tasks in your workday.
The problem is that you’re likely trying to manage MOST of your tasks while they’re STILL sitting at their source, which is what causes the daily inefficiencies.
And when I think about how much time is spent on managing both the tools AND the tasks, I can sense the massive amount of time that is rushing out of your workday like water from a leaky bucket.
What you may not realize is that it’s actually IMPOSSIBLE to efficiently and effectively plan, prioritize and accomplish tasks—while trying to manage them ONLY from their sources—without missing, losing or forgetting something—or a LOT of things—which only causes trouble.
And yes, while we will ALWAYS have to check the many sources of our tasks throughout the day to gather new ones, it’s what you DO with the tasks once you’ve discovered them that makes ALL the difference in the world to your workday productivity. This includes how much time and energy you can save, how efficiently and effectively you can work, and how proactive you can be.
There should only be ONE Method and ONE Location for Managing Tasks.
The earlier ‘expert’ advice advises you to “update and move items over [from the long-term task list] to the short-term task list…” This indicates TWO lists in play, but there’s absolutely no need to spend ANY time deciding what’s “long term” or “short term” and creating two lists.
ALL of your tasks—regardless of when you plan to take action—should be part of the SAME task management system or list. The target dates for action you select will tell you when you want to take action and this will save you LOADS of time that you would have to spend getting all caught up in separating “long term” from “short term” tasks.
This is not unlike the way you would manage time commitments. Can you imagine having all of your meetings, events, lunches, vacations, conferences, and phone calls on a dozen different calendars? That would be a nightmare. Time commitments should be ALL on ONE digital calendar.
So, all of the time and energy spent on all of the old ‘expert’ advice out there—including writing and rewriting to-do lists, regrouping with daily and weekly planning, and managing long-term and short-term to-do lists—is completely wasteful of time when you can very easily engage in continuous planning instead.
Continuous Planning is the Answer to Making Steady Progress and Saving Time.
Tasks CANNOT stay at their source if you expect to plan, prioritize and accomplish them with any great degree of speed, quality or accuracy. If this is your goal, the only way to achieve it is to consolidate ALL tasks into ONE system—no matter the source of the task or when you plan to take action.
With ONE complete, central, digital inventory of tasks, you can…
- Create a plan that’s easy to use, easy to prioritize, and easy to change
- Address new tasks and information as they appear and make ongoing decisions
- Store information immediately where it is best kept for future reference
- Add tasks immediately to the ONE place for managing tasks
- Gain 100% awareness of tasks and be fully in control of planning and prioritizing with precision
- Execute proactively, and work less reactively
- Make BIG progress EVERY day
- Turn on a dime when you need to—without missing, losing or forgetting anything
As a result, this kind of task management approach enables “continuous planning.” It’s much easier, more efficient, more accurate, and it supports you in being more productive. You’ll have a strong plan, but a flexible one, and you can always be ready for anything.
This is something you CANNOT achieve using a paper to-do list or a planner, which are NOT all-inclusive of tasks and are ridiculously difficult to use for planning and reprioritizing when you need to. Further, a digital “to-do” app on your phone is no better.
A task app is still a STAND-ALONE to-do list, like a to-do list on a legal pad. Neither of these tools, nor many others, will allow you to quickly and easily include ALL tasks from ALL sources and therefore cannot support accurate planning and reprioritizing as necessary.
Build Your Central, Digital Task List Now and Save Time Forever
If you want to stop spending time (wasting time!) on writing and rewriting to-do lists, daily or weekly planning, and task regrouping, you can. If you want that 10-30 minutes back every morning (or 2.5 hours every week), PLUS all of the time you’ll save by having a Task List that works like Mission Control, you can have it. Just build your digital Task list in the email system you already have.
But you need to include everything. It’s the only way continuous planning will work, and it’s the BEST way to manage your tasks.
With ONE complete, central, digital inventory of tasks, you won’t have to…
- Write or rewrite to-do lists on paper or in planners.
- Catch up after things piled up.
- Engage in extensive reviewing and regrouping for daily or weekly planning.
- Manage a ‘long-term’ list and a ‘short-term’ list of tasks and projects.
- Waste time regrouping BETWEEN tasks during the day to figure out what to do next.
- Deal with surprises and forgotten tasks.
- Waste time doubling-back to address something that was previously missed.
Imagine getting a handle on ALL of your tasks, projects, reminders and responsibilities—everything you said “yes” to—and the peace of mind you’ll get when you have everything under control.
Imagine saving LOADS of TIME that would have otherwise been wasted using multiple tools for managing tasks, instead having ONE clear, bird’s eye view. Imagine realizing… your workday just got easier.
