Werkstätte.

I woke up Tuesday morning, early.

I had a dentist appointment at 8AM and I wanted to walk to his office, which is about three-miles away from my apartment, on East 40th. That way I'd have my exercise and my appointment over and done with before most people--or at least most people in advertising--are even out of bed.

This might be a generational thing, but I was up, having my coffee, posting my blog and scanning both "The New York Times" and "The Wall Street Journal" online at about 5:30. 

I always like to check the papers--mostly to see if the world has ended. No sense keeping my nose to the grindstone if a hypersonic Russian, Chinese, North Koran, Iranian, Syrian, or Marjorie Taylor Greene-derived nuclear missile is heading my way. I'm serious about work, but I'm not stupid. If we're all going to imminently die, I might crawl back to bed and sleep things off.

With that as prelude, and with one foot and one mandible out the door and on my way to my dentist, I made a PDF of this article from the Journal, vowing to read it the moment I had a minute or the minute I had a moment, whichever came first.

I was, I'll admit, surprised I hadn't been sent the article by a dozen or seven friends, because it seemed like the sort of currency that gets traded among my "posse." But as I often say, I might be the only non-plutocrat in the world who actually reads the Journal. It's not that it's not a great newspaper. I suppose the virulence of its fascism scares off a lot of readers less sturdy than I.

Nevertheless, with a headline that reads, "Many people spend two full days a week on email and in meetings," I'm sure the article would be the stuff of Jimmys Kimmel and Fallon, and Stephen Colbert, but, they're on strike. Alas.

Anyway, onto the article. The effects of crap on work are staggering. And much of the data in the article comes from Microsoft. They examined millions of users of their business applications in one of the largest studies of how people--for now, that's you and me--actually spend their workdays.

Here are some of the details. 

• We spend the equivalent of two workdays a week in meetings and on email.
  
  
• The average employee spent 57% of their time using software for communication, in meetings, email and chat. (That's 23 hours in a 40-hour week.)
  
  
• They spend 43% of their time creating spreadsheets and writing presentations.
  
  
• A separate MSFT study of 31,000 people around the world said that nearly two out of three struggled to find time and energy to do their actual jobs.
  
  
• These people were 300% more likely to say that "innovation and strategic thinking" are a challenge.
  
  
• A 2022 Harris Poll of 1,200 workers estimated that people lost 7.47 hours/week to poor communications. 
  
  
• Based on an average salary of $67K, poor communication cost more than $12K an employee per year.
  
  
• Using data gathered from its suite of business software, Microsoft found that from February, 2020-February, 2022, the amount of time spent in meetings nearly tripled.
  
  
• According to research from the McKinsey Global Institute, since 2005 despite technology advances, the growth of labor-productivity is about 50% less than the long-term post-World War II rate. (1.4% v. 2.2%.)
  
  
• A February survey of 1000 full-time workers by Visier, Inc., a workplace analytics company revealed that 43% of them spend more than 10 hours a week trying to look productive, rather than on actual tasks.
  

That's all for now. 

I have work not to do.