Wasting Time At Work: Are You Guilty? [Infographic]

Do you know how much time you waste at work? The thing is, almost everyone wastes valuable work time on gossip, browsing the Internet and online interaction without even noticing how much time has gone by. When people think of wasting time, they usually think it means time spent doing pretty much nothing at all. However, from a company perspective, each minute that you put your attention on something other than what you are supposed to do, you are wasting time. It might not matter overall, but when you start looking at what you get done and realize you are behind on your deadlines (or even if you just don’t do what you are supposed to at all), you know you are doing something “wrong.”

That fact of the matter is that each year millions of dollars are lost because employees are wasting time doing pretty much whatever they feel is more “important” at the moment. Sure, we are not robots who you can just give a task to, and we’ll do it. There has to be some kind of inspiration and dedication towards what we are doing, otherwise we are pretty much doing something that will not give us anything at all in return. Work is supposed to be fun, even if that sounds weird to you. When you find a job that you really enjoy, you will find that time is never enough for what you love doing. You will simply find that it’s entirely reversed.

So what are the most common time wasters at work? I guess the question each one of you (and me) is asking yourself is, “Am I guilty of wasting valuable time at work?” There is no point in feeling guilty about it at all. If you’re not wasting time on something at work, you’re not being creative enough, or at least that is how I see it. Of course, wasting valuable time just because you are too lazy to work is not a good thing. However, creativity and inspiration have to come from somewhere, and all three of these common time wasters (mentioned in this infographic) could potentially spawn just that.

A new infographic presented and created by TimeDoctor thoroughly divides the 3 most common areas where people waste time at work. It’s quite interesting to see that as many as 21% of people waste up to 5 hours a week at work. That’s a lot of hours that go towards pretty much nothing other than personal interaction. It’s interaction that they are getting paid for. It’s good for the employee, but probably not so good for the company if it is a company with over 100 employees for example. It adds up.

Have a brief look at this infographic, and see if you are among the people who are wasting time on stuff you shouldn’t be doing. TimeDoctor is actually a pretty interesting solution for company owners to see how much time is being wasted within their company. It tracks hours through their system and reports back to you. Don’t be a slave driver though. No one wants to work for one of those. A free and inspiring environment will sort the workers from the wasters so to speak. If you give your employees all the freedom in the world where they get a deadline and they have to meet it, you will find out pretty quickly who you want to work with. The question remains, are you a worker or a waster?