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What are the biggest time wasters? Pace Productivity conducted surveys among 690 employees and entrepreneurs across North America. We asked two questions. The first was designed to find out what factors impede respondents' productivity that are outside of their control. The second is designed to find out how much people take responsibility for wasting their own time.

Answers to the first question are more numerous, because many people wrote multiple responses. This is not the case with the second question. In fact the most common response to it is no response at all. Accepting personal responsibility is harder to do than blaming something else.

Overall, both questions give a sense of the most pressing productivity issues. Only the top 15 responses for each question are noted here.

What things, outside of your control, get in the way of your productivity?

# of Responses

Paperwork / administrative tasks

Customer requests: service / problems / complaints

Phone calls / phone interruptions / inquiries

Computer / system / equipment problems

No internal support / other departments' inefficiency

Unspecified interruptions

Traffic / travel

Meetings - too many / too long / unnecessary

Volume of work / not enough time

Staffing issues / people absent

Requests from peers / other departments

Changing priorities / unplanned projects

Fire fighting / emergencies

Doing other people's jobs

Customers without appointments

135

115

101

What things, within your control, get in the way of your productivity?

# of Responses

No response / nothing

Paperwork / administrative tasks

Interruptions by phone or in person

Time management

No focus / doing too many things / no prioritizing

Procrastination

Poor planning

Socializing / gossip / breaks / calls to friends

Customer requests / situations / complaints

Lack of knowledge / training on products, duties

Distractions / no discipline / daydreaming

Not being organized

Burnout / sickness / lack of concentration /stress

Filing / inefficient personal filing

Internal communications

Doing others' work / being too helpful

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