When I run Lean or Continuous Improvement sessions, I often explain that around 70% of our daily activity doesn’t add any real value to what we’re trying to achieve. That figure rarely surprises anyone. In fact, when I ask people to guess, they often land somewhere around that number themselves.
Some of that is what we call Necessary Non-Value Adding Activity - things like compliance tasks, basic admin, coordination with others. You can’t eliminate it entirely, but you might be able to reduce or streamline it. But a lot of it is pure waste. And in theory, if you could stop doing all the non-value-adding stuff, you could free up at least a day or two each week. That’s one of the ideas behind the four-day work week.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple.
Yes, you might be doing tasks that don’t need doing - you could just stop doing those. Yes, some of your processes might be inefficient - you could improve those. And yes, you may be gold-plating things that are perfectly 'good-enough' in bronze.
But in my experience, much of the time we “lose”, especially in the knowledge work / office environment, is not lost in big, obvious blocks - it disappears in a thousand small ways as a constant stream of inefficiencies throughout the day - a few seconds here and a few seconds there.
While some tasks do actually take a certain amount of time, much of our perception of our shortage of time results from something deeper - how we make use of our cognitive capacity in the time we have available. We have limited cognitive capacity - we can only think of so much at once, our conscious thought is relatively slow compared to our subconscious thought, and our mind tires as the day progresses. And once our cognitive capacity starts to deplete, we make even poorer use of the time we do have.
Here are just a few examples:
Studies suggest we spend up to 25% of our working time looking for information and things — emails, files, that one photo, keys, the missing invoice, the login password, someone’s phone number, the right version of the spreadsheet… It’s exhausting!
Solution: Be deliberate. Create consistent file naming systems. Have designated places for things. Destroy or delete junk or old drafts as you go along (remove clutter). Most importantly, build the habit of putting things back where they should be - both physically and digitally. It’s not exciting, but it pays off hugely - every day.
Yes, we can walk and chew gum. We can even cook three things at once if we’ve done it a hundred times before. We can multi-task well when it comes to physical actions. But when it comes to knowledge work - planning, writing, analysing, decision-making - we can only think deeply about one thing at a time.
And, every time we switch from one task to another (checking an email while writing a proposal, or answering a message mid-report), our brain goes through a context shift. This involves off-ramping the old task on on-ramping the new. That transition burns time, but more importantly, it burns mental energy. It also prevents us from getting into flow - the focused state where we do our best, most creative thinking - and so it limits the depth to which we can engage with our main task. Over time, our brains get used to not thinking too deeply, and actively search for interruptions to ensure we don't.
Solution: Set up focused blocks of time, even if just 30 - 45 minutes. Avoid context-shifting during those windows. Emails, Slack messages, phone calls - save them for the in-between moments.
This one’s less visible, but incredibly common. When we're mentally over-engaged, we revisit the same thoughts without moving forward; our brain tends to loop:
“Did I send that email?”
“Should I do X before Y?”
“What if I forgot something important?”
And it's most common:
When we’re uncertain about what to do nextWhen we have incomplete informationWhen we feel we have too much to do and not enough timeWhen a task or conversation triggers a negative emotion (frustration, anxiety, regret).
In these states, we’re not solving problems, we’re just mentally circling them without progress. Ruminating feels like thinking, but it’s not deliberate or productive. It just adds to the mental backlog, increasing stress and reducing clarity; it’s mentally draining and rarely leads to action.
Solution: Externalise your thoughts. Write things down. Get your to-do list out of your head and onto a page or screen so you are not trying to mentally track them which consumes mental capacity. Use notes, task lists, or even a voice memo. Once the worry is out of your brain, it stops competing for your attention. As David Allen (of 'Getting Things Done' fame) put it: “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them”.
Every choice, no matter how small, consumes a bit of mental energy: what to wear, what to eat, what order to do things in. As the day progresses, decision fatigue sets in, and the brain starts to avoid hard decisions and we either procrastinate, avoid tough calls, or go with the easiest option (which isn’t always the best one). And then we lose additional time as we dither over important decisions that we can't delay any longer, and then feel the need to second-guess them later.
Solution: Reduce trivial decisions. Have go-to routines and daily rituals. Use defaults where you can - standards and templates. Review and prioritise your day before it starts, not halfway through when you’re already juggling three things.
When our heads are full, we often tackle whatever feels most urgent instead of most important because it’s easier or more immediately satisfying - and feels like we are making progress. But that usually means the more important, higher-value tasks get pushed to later in the day - when we’re already mentally spent. And so we spend our best hours on low-leverage work (answering emails etc) and leave strategic work for later when we're tired. And so, important work gets rushed or delayed, and we lose time reorienting later.
Solution: Protect your best brain time. Do your most important thinking when your mind is freshest, not when the inbox is empty. Review and reprioritise tasks at the start or end of each day. And, if you have a frog to eat, eat it before breakfast - if there is an important task that you don't want to do, get it done and out of the way - otherwise that frog sits at the back of your mind eating up mental capacity; and if you have 2 frogs to eat, eat the ugly one first!!
No discussion of using your time efficiently would be complete without mention of meetings.
A one-hour meeting doesn’t just cost you an hour. It also costs you the momentum you had before, and often the recovery process you need after.
Even brief meetings cause a hard shift in context, pulling you out of whatever you were doing. And they rarely end cleanly; most leave behind a trail of actions, thoughts, and feelings. Sometimes you come out energised. Sometimes, you come out mentally scattered or emotionally off-balance.
The problem isn’t just that meetings interrupt; it’s that they leave residue. Your brain keeps chewing on what was said, what wasn’t said, what you should have said… while also trying to get back into the task you were doing before. It’s a cognitive double-whammy.
Solution: Before the meeting, take a few minutes to do a controlled context shift - and gather your thoughts. After the meeting, don’t jump straight into the next thing. Take five minutes to clear your head, decompress, and recover: stand up, breathe, walk. If you feel frustrated - allocate 90 seconds to fully vent, then move on. Then jot down any key decisions, actions, or follow-ups. That way, you’re not carrying it all with you. And if you can, avoid back-to-back meetings entirely; your brain needs a buffer (15 to 30 minutes should do it).
All of these examples feel like time problems, but they’re actually cognitive load problems.
When our mental bandwidth is full of unclosed loops, half-remembered tasks, emotional leftovers from the last meeting, and the general buzz of busyness, we lose our ability to focus. And even when we do have time, we can’t use it well.
So yes, reducing wasted time matters. But the bigger win is this: Free your head, and you free your time.
Ad Futurum
Graham
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