Stressful projects, approaching deadlines, and a to-do list that never seems to end have become all too common, pressuring both our personal and work lives. That’s why we took the time to put together this list of essential time management statistics that will hopefully help you reduce the stress you’re feeling, and maybe even make you hum the old Rolling Stones classic tune “Time Is On My Side”.
Time management information shared by Clockify shows that we spend eight years and four months of our entire lives watching TV, six years on social media, one year and three days socializing, four years and six months eating, seven years trying to fall asleep, and one year and four months exercising. Facts about time management also show that most people complete an average of an extra working year without pay.
Despite the availability of time tracking apps, 83% of us don’t bother with tracking how we spend our time. Information on time management meanwhile indicates that we could benefit from a time limit for all of our tasks and reducing our time on social media.
A person receives one interruption every eight minutes, or about seven interruptions every hour, adding up to 50 to 60 of them a day. Time management facts by Dokumen show that an average interruption takes five minutes, for a total of approximately four hours or 50% of the average workday. Generally, 80% of these interruptions are classified as “worthless,” resulting in a waste of approximately three hours per day.
One of the facts about time management by the New Economics Foundation, London, shows that employee satisfaction at the workplace leads to higher productivity and increases creativity by three times. Other time management benefits include reduced stress levels, increased job satisfaction, a better quality of life, and brighter career prospects.
Organization and time management statistics by Communicaid show that the average worker sends and receives 190 messages per day. No matter how you look at it, there are only 24 hours a day, and eight hours in a workday (typically). If you want to manage information passed through these messages, you must realize the importance of time management for employees and managers alike.
One dangerous time management myth out there is the belief that scheduling tasks better, always using a to-do list is all that it takes to manage your time. In reality, these methods are more likely to delay you. Harvard Business Review notes that these types of tasks fall into the “Arrangement” time management category. However, there are two other time management skills: awareness and adaptation, which are more important.
Better time management doesn’t mean squeezing in more tasks into an already crowded schedule. Winning the time management game involves cutting down the unimportant stuff. Facts about time management show that you can achieve this by either eliminating, delegating, or outsourcing certain activities to make more time available for the important stuff.
Multitasking is generally a bad idea since it gives a false sense of accomplishment. Working on a single thing and finishing it, however, is easier said than done. Turning off your devices and keeping your email client closed are just some of the ways to help yourself stay focused. Alternatively, you can try to group tasks and work at specific intervals, focusing at a single task at a time.
In other words, nearly one working day per week is completely wasted. Business owners can get more critical activities done by outsourcing small tasks to an assistant.
Most students admit that they still use handwritten notes on a calendar to manage their time. Additionally, time management statistics for college students show that 50% don’t use a single system to organize class notes, contacts, research, and assignments.
Even with new project management software, document management and scanning solutions readily available, many companies are still “going the old way”.
Wasting time at work statistics further show that the most common ways to procrastinate at work include texting, which takes up 28 minutes per day, followed by gossiping with 18 minutes. All of these contribute to poor time management skills in the workplace.
It might seem that multitasking increases productivity. However, the University of Michigan has found it to be a productivity killer. When test subjects tried to do more than one thing at once, their productivity decreased by as much as 40%.
These time management stats mean that as a manager, you need to do everything in your power to reduce the workload that you leave on your employees. Try to delegate only one task to each worker. Doing so will help to increase their productivity and therefore get projects done sooner.
Time management and stress statistics indicate that other sources of pressure amongst workers in the US include too many urgent deadlines, long work hours, unclear expectations, and employee lack of cooperation. Pressure can be eased by planning the day correctly and setting realistic deadlines.
Time management statistics show that employees seeking clarification of any instruction account for 280 lost hours per year. One easy fix to quickly gain back this lost time is to find a way to communicate with your team efficiently. Email may seem like a better option, but it offers no opportunity for good collaboration, so meeting your employees in person, or communicating with them via chat seems to be the better option.
Having perfect organizational and time management skills remains an elusive goal for many employees and managers, impacting productivity. These time management statistics will hopefully bring this goal a little closer. They are, however, just the first step in a long journey to time efficiency which involves moving away from tempting swift solutions and going toward developing a sustainable, long-term time management strategy.
Sources
Clockify, Mindful Productivity Blog, Visually, Dokumen, European Journal of Social Psychology, New Economics Foundation, Global Banking & Finance Review, Business Insider, Formstack, BidSketch, LindseyPollak, The Enterprisers Project, SHRM, Time Management Ninja, Inc., RELIABLEPLANT, Scholastic, DocuSign, Lifehack, Human Resources, The Sydney Morning Herald, The National Academic Press, The American Institute of Stress