Time Killers At Work: How To Avoid Them

1 of 9

(Image: ViPier via Flickr under Creative Commons license)

Into each workday must fall activities that do nothing but suck time, hurt productivity, and siphon the very life force out of you. How many meetings have you walked out of wishing you had those lost hours of your life back? How many quick Internet searches have you started at work that ended up leading you down a black hole of lost productivity? When was the last time you found value in your company's Byzantine employee review process?

Wasted time on the job is a significant problem. One study estimates that time-wasting activities at work cost businesses well into the 12 figures.

Some productivity killers are employee-driven, while others are designed into workplace processes or even into our office building designs themselves. On the following pages, you'll see a rogue's gallery of workplace time-killers. Lest these make you lose your will to work, we offer an alternative to each time-waster that is more productive, serves similar goals, and can keep you and your employees content.

Once you've reviewed the following options, be sure to tell us in the comments section below which workplace time wasters -- and time-savers -- you've personally engaged in, and how they've affected your workday.

1 of 9