Time Management Statistics

In 2007, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, such as writing reports or computer code, after dealing with incoming email. They wandered off to reply to other messages or browse the Web.
New York Times, 3/25/2007

15% of Americans say they are addicted to email.
59% of those using portable devices check email as it arrives.
43% of users sleep near their email unit to hear incoming messages.
40% consider email accessibility when they plan a trip.
83% check their email once a day while on vacation.
43% check their email first thing every morning.
AOL, Opinion Research Corp., study 7/26/07

About 24% of companies have had employee emails subpoenaed by a court or regulator, up from 20% two years ago, and 15% have gone to court to defend against lawsuits triggered by an employee email, up from 13%.
2006 Workplace E-Mail, Instant Messaging and Blog survey released by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, in Columbus, Ohio.
Wall Street Journal, 7/2006

92% of studied respondents say they make or take work related communications outside of the office, including during vacations. Nearly three-fourths says they stay "switched on" during weekends, and a fifth have interrupted a date for work reasons.
Lexamark International study, Wall Street Journal 12/12/06

More than one in twenty U.S. adults surveyed nationally said their relationships have suffered from excessive use of the Internet. 12% said they often stay online more than they would like to. 14% say it is difficult to stay offline for several days.
Elias Abonjaoude, Stanford University, Impulse Control Disorders Clinic

Stress and Work/Life Balance

--23% of workers say they are dissatisfied with their work/life balance, up from 18% in 2008.
--19% are hoping to leave current jobs in 2010 for a new one. 9% plan to in 2011. Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder, 11/2009

Top priorities about work: Salary 79%, Work-life balance 64%
Work during vacation: Baby boomers 71%, Gen X 49%, Gen Y 38%
Available to family & children when needed: Men 68%, Women 46%
Take the opportunity to work from home: Men 91%, Women 75%
Accenture survey, 2009

The most important work attributes for Americans are:
---81%, good pay
---66%, interesting and challenging work
---65%, health insurance
---32%, strong social responsiblilty
In their perfect job, 31% would want more responsibility, and 6% would like less.
Randstad Work Watch survey, 10/1/09

70% of employees work beyond scheduled time and on weekends; more than half cited "self-imposed pressure" as the reason.
Society for Human Resource Management, Spring 2009

28% of Americans interviewed in 2008 said they had been spending less time with household members. This is compared with 11% in 2006. In the first half of this decade, people reported an average of 26 hours per month with family, dropping to 18 hours in 2008.
Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, University of Southern California, June 2009

One in ten U.S. workers report increased snacking during the day because of concerns over the current economic situation. 43% say they have gained weight in their current job.
CareerBuilder, survey Feb-March 2009

In 2009 Americans will throw away 465 million vacation days.
Expedia.com, 2009

Men who take vacations every year lowered the risk of heart disease by 20%. Those who did not have a vacation for the 5 years of the study had the highest mortality and incidence of heart disease.
Houston Woman Magazine, 8/2009, re: State University of New York research

Women who vacationed more than once a year had less deprseeion and tension as well as greater marital satisfaction than other groups in the study, including thoses who vacationed once a year. The most distressed, about 20%, had only taken a vacation once every 6 years.
Houston Woman Magazine, 8/2009, re: Wisconsin's Marshfield Clinic study, funded by National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health

Senior executives polled said the average length of a lunch break was 35 minutes. They worked through lunch an average of three times per week.
Office Team, "Table for None," 9/17/2008

63% of financial advisers who described themselves as lacking time management skills and discipline experienced health issues, including sleep apnea and high blood pressure.
Health of Advisors Report, 9/2008

Employees who exercised before work or during lunch breaks were better able to handle ;the day's demands. Their general attitude also improved.

48% of us feel our lives have become more stressful in the past five years.
American Psychological Association (APA), 2007

71% of white-collar workers feel stressed about the amount of information they must process and act on while doing business; 60% feel overwhelmed.
Institute of the Future, Menlo Park, CA

45 percent of high-earning managers are too tired to converse with their spouse or partner after a long day at the office. This strain is wreaking havoc on family and personal lives.
Study by Sylvia Ann Hewlett & Carolyn Buck Luce, Harvard Business Review, 12/2006

The average work week is 54 hours. In an average week, only 14 percent work 40 hours or less. One-third work 50-59 hours a week, and 80% work between 40 and 79 hours. at their jobs according to a 2006 study of 2,500 Americans.
Sage Software Survey, Priority 2/2007

About 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, up from 34% in 2001. Almost 60% of meals are rushed, and 34% of lunches are choked down on the run. To avoid wasting time, we're talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out.
Business Week, p. 60, 10/3/2005

51.2 million Americans, or 35% are vacation deprived, earning an average of 14 days and taking eleven of those days, the least amount of vacation days among their international counterparts.
Expedia.com, 2007

Rising stress levels can cause seriously inappropriate behavior. 13% of surveyed workers claimed to have personally committed, or have observed co-workers commit, an act that would be described as "desk rage"--angry or destructive outbursts during work time because of the high levels of stress.
Caravan Opinion Research, 2000

U.S. companies lose between $200-$300 billion a year due to absenteeism, tardiness, burnout, decreased productivity, worker's compensation claims, increased employee turnover, and medical insurance costs resulting from employee work-related stress.
National Safety Council, Priority Magazine, 1-2/2007

In general, a third of all American workers could be viewed as chronically overworked in 2004, according to a report by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute in New York City. The more overworked employees were, the more likely they were to make mistakes, feel angry with their employers and resent colleagues they felt weren't working as hard, the study found. People who felt overworked also reported higher stress levels, more symptoms of clinical depression and poorer health.
Jennifer Scott Cimperman, Houston Business Journal, 2/27/2006

Are you too overworked to focus on your job? Yes, 62.8%; Sometimes, 23%; No, 14.2%.
Boston.com Internet poll, Spring 2005

In a recent Gallup Poll, 80 percent of workers said they feel stress on the job; nearly half said they need help in learning how to manage stress; and 42 percent said their coworkers need help in coping with stress....Job stress can lead to several problems, including illness and injury for employees, as well as higher insurance costs and lost productivity for employees.
Mike Maseda, Houston Business Journal, 9/3-9/2004

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state unequivocally that 80% of our medical expenditures are now stress related.
Fast Company Magazine, p. 88, 2/2003

At the Mayo Clinic 80 to 85% of patients were ill, directly or indirectly because of mental stress.
Mayo Clinic study

Rising stress levels can cause seriously inappropriate behavior. 13% of surveyed workers claimed to have personally committed, or have observed co-workers commit, an act that would be described as "desk rage"--angry or destructive outbursts during work time because of the high levels of stress.
Caravan Opinion Research, 2000

At least 30 percent of employed adults don't take all their vacation days, according to a 2005 Harris Interactive poll. Each year, Americans hand back 421 million days to their employers.
YogaJournal, p. 72, 11/2005

Of senior FORTUNE 500 males executives, 84% says they'd like job options that let them realize their professional aspirations whle having more time for things outside work: 55% say they're willing to sacrifice income. Half say they wonder if the sacrifices they've made for their careers are worth it.
Fortune, p. 112, 11/28/2005

The number of individuals citing excessive hours at work on the part of a spouse has tripled. A lack of communication and a lack of attention are also frequently mentioned by both sexes as reasons for going their separate ways.
Patricia Katz, Pause Newsletter, 3/29/2006

Since 1973, the median number of hours that people say they work has jumped from 41 a week to 49, according to Harris Interactive....That has mostly come out of people's leisure time, which has dropped from 26 to 19 hours a week over the same period.
Wall Street Journal, 1/26/2004

Time and Multitasking

People who regularly juggle several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memories, or switch from one task to another as well as those who prefer to focus on one thing at a time. Heavy media multitaskers are paying a big price. Stanford Report, 8/24/2009, Study by Clifford Nass, Eyal Ophir & Anthony Wagner

45% of senior executives felt that employees would be more productive if meetings were banned once a week.
Office Team, "Let's Not Meet," 5/7/2009

The number of hours annually that the average traveler found himself or herself in rush-hour traffice jams grew to 36 hours in 2007, as compared with 14 in 1982. In most big cities, prime-time congestion takes up 3 hours in the morning and evening.
Urban Mobility Report, Texas Transportation Institute, 2009

Using time-diary studies, it is found that people claiming to work 60 to 69 hours per week clocked an average of 52.6 hours, while those who believed they worked 70-, 80-hour or greater weeks totaled 58.8 hours.
Prof. Robinson, 2006-2007 comparisons, American Time Use Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Open screens on desktops, files on the desk, and coworkers all distracted workers so that only 55% of work was resumed immediately. Productivity in the business sector has been increasing by only 3% since 2000.
Herman Miller Inc., "The Siren Song of Multitasking," 2007

43% of Americans categorize themselves as disorganized, and 21% have missed vital work deadlines. Nearly half say disorganization causes them to work late at least 2 or times each week.
Jane Von Bergen, "So many reasons to neaten up...", Boston Globe 3/12/06
Esselte survey, David Lewis

Most people actually use 60% or less of available work time. When more than 38,000 people in 200 countries were queried about individual productivity, it showed that even though they were physically at work five days a week, they were only productively using three days.
Microsoft Survey, March 15, 2005

Unnecessary meetings cost U.S. businesses approximately $37 billion each year.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005

A study last fall by Basex, a New York research firm, found that office distractions ate up 2.1 hours a day for the average worker. Another study found that employees devoted an average of 11 minutes to a project before being distracted. Researchers Gloria Mark and Victor Gonsalez of the University of California, Irvine, found that once interrupted, it takes workers 25 minutes to return to the original task, if they return at all. People switch activities, such as making a call, speaking with someone in their cubicle or working on a document, every three minutes on average, Mark said.
Betty Lin-Fisher (for Knight Ridder Newspapers), Houston Chronicle, 2/27/2006)

Employees spend an average of 36 minutes per day at work on personal tasks. By gender, men take 44 minutes and women 29 minutes, with the 18-34 year old group using the most time.
Office Team surveys, February 2007

The cost of interruptions to the U.S. economy is estimated at $588 billion a year.
Jonathan B. Spira, "The Cost of Not Paying Attention," Basex Research, 2005

A recent study from the Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London suggests that your IQ falls 10 points when you're fielding constant emails, text messages, and calls, the same loss you'd experience if you missed an entire night's sleep and more than double the 4-point loss you'd have after smoking marijuana. On average men fared worse than women because, researchers say, men have more difficulty multitasking.
YogaJournal, p. 22, 12/2005

On a typical day, office workers are interrupted about seven times an hour, which adds up to 56 interruptions a day, 80% of which are considered trivial, according to time-management experts.
Wendy Cole, TIME Magazine, 10/11/2004

For 10 years researchers studied the behavior of busy managers in nearly a dozen large companies. Their findings on managerial behavior showed that fully 90% of managers squander their time in all sorts of ineffective activities. In other words, a mere 10% of managers spend their time in a committed, purposeful, and reflective manner.
Dr. Helke Bruch and Dr. Sumantra Ghoshal, Harvard Business Review, 2/2002

Paper and Filing

More than 40% of printouts are discarded within 24 hours.
Daniel Lyons, "The Paper Chasers," Newsweek 12/01/09
Statistics, Xerox Research

Paper has grown consistently over the last three decades. One of the biggst sources of paper growth really is the Internet. It's the printing of email.
Anne Mulcahy, Xerox CEO, "Paper Trail," Wall Street Journal interview, 3/9/09

Print can be expensive. Even as law libraries place fewer books on their shelves, they spend more. 76% spent more on print materials in 2007 than in 2006.
Alan Cohen, "Survey: CI on the Rise at Firm Law Libraries," www.Law.com, 8/19/08
Statistics, The American Lawyers' annual survey of law librarians

Not keeping track of papers can become expensive. Late fees for credit card payments rose to $18.1 billion in 2006 from $17.1 billion in 2005.
Robert Hammer, RK Hammer Advisors, 2007

10 billion B2B transactions are processed annually in the US. Costs range from a high of $58.09 per transaction for paper checks to a low of $1.50 per transaction for electronic paper processing. The average corporation processes 500,000 payments annually.
C.J. Wimley, Benefits of B2B E-Payments," The Credit & Financial Management Review, 9/1/08
Statistic, Aberdeen Group

All paper types can be recycled. About 70% of total waste from commercial office tenants is from paper materials.
Mike McConnell, "Talking Trash," Journal of Property Management, 7/01/07
Statistic, EPA

In surveying 1000 middle managers of large companies in the U.S. and U.K., 59% miss important information almost every day because it exists within the company but they cannot find it.
Accenture, Wall Street Journal, 5/14/2007

95% of all information is still processed in paper form, with employees printing an average of 45 sheets of paper per day.
Frank Booty, "Managing the Paper Trail," Systems I New UK, 3/01/07

15% of all paper handled in businesses is lost, according the the Delphi Group, a Boston consultancy, and 30 percent of all employees' time is spent trying to find lost documents.
Jane M. Von Bergen (Knight Ridder Newspapers), The Boston Globe, 3/21/2006

Executives waste six weeks per year searching for lost documents.
From a survey of 2,600 executives by Esselte, maker of Pendaflex and Dymo, FastCompany Magazine, 8/2004

From 1750 to 1900 (150 years), all human knowledge doubled.
From 1900 to 1950 (50 years), it doubled again.
From 1950 to 1965 (15 years), it doubled again.
Estimates have the sum of all human knowledge is now doubling at the rate of every 24 months.
University of Houston, Brief History of Training & HRD

A paper by Berkeley scientists estimated that information created on print, film, tape and disk in 2002 was roughly equivalent to all the text in the Library of Congress--multiplied by 500,000. The amount has doubled in the past three years and will grow even faster as people begin to take advantage of low-cost storage technology.
Steven Levy, Newsweek, 11/10/2003

Organizing and Clutter

As of January 2008, there were 52,453 primary storage facilities in the U.S.
Self Storage Association (SSA), Facts & Trends Report 1/1/09
Fact, National Facilities Database

700,000 to 1.4 million Americans may have compulsive disorder syndrome--difficulty in throwing away anything for fear that they may need the items later.
Self Storage Association: Obsessive Compulsive Foundation

Getting rid of excess clutter would eliminate 40 percent of the housework in the average home.
National Soap and Detergent Association

About 70% of office trash is waste paper. The average U.S. company could recycle up to 50% of the current waste.
Priority Magazine, 9/2007