[Misuse of office technology adds more than two hours to the average British working day]

Couldn’t track down the source material from the UK productivity study referenced in this press release, but, if they’re accurate, some of the data are interesting to say the least.

The misuse of telephones and email at work is hindering workers from doing their jobs, increasing bad habits at work and lengthening the working day…

Two hours, 10 minutes was the amount that people wasted each day at work on average, of which one hour 38 minutes was due to communication technologies not being used to good effect.

Seems conservative to me, but — you know — I’m a terrific karmasuck about these things.

Also intriguing are these bullets on “average times wasted each day:”

• Travel not including to and from work: 14 minutes
• Chasing responses to urgent emails: 42 minutes
• Responding to voicemails or managing phone calls: 27 minutes
• Trying to locate colleagues: 12 minutes
• Meetings that are unnecessarily long: 12 minutes
• Asking others for files or documents (e.g. version control): 9 minutes
• Scheduling and rescheduling meetings: 8 minutes
• Conference calls that could be far shorter: 6 minutes

I’d love to see a number on the people who refuse to capture/liberate the tasks from their incoming email; I’d wager there’s 30-90 person-minutes a day in there for “Scrolling through inbox and staring haplessly at 1,200 unprocessed messages.”