The average workday lasts about 8 hours. Since there are five workdays in a week, it follows that on average, we should be working 40 hours a week.

Interestingly, very few people work that many hours in a week. According to multiple studies, including one by HubSpot, 89% of workers admit to working less than eight hours a day. In the HubSpot study, for instance, a majority of respondents said they work for only about 5 hours every day, translating to approximately 25 hours a week. Put simply, the average worker is only productive for 3 out of the 5 weekdays!

Where do the other two days go?

There are a number of culprits here, with emails (43.5%) topping the list. The average C-Level staff receives 34 business emails per week. Since it takes 16 minutes to read, digest, and respond to an email, one is likely to spend over 9 hours on emails alone every week!

Unproductive meetings come second, accounting for 42.3% of time lost at work. On average, executives spend 7.75 hours on unproductive meetings every week. The other three main time-wasting activities at the workplace are:

• Browsing online (21.8%)
• Commuting (17.4%)
• Procrastination (10%)

Put together; these activities can consume over 3 hours of your work time every day. If you want to be successful, find a way to minimize them.

Thanks to Scoro.com for this useful infographic.