I estimate that I spend 80% of my day doing one of these:
– Navigating through poorly designed corporate processes or websites
– Troubleshooting software or processes that are broken or unintuitive
– Taking “training classes” that don't actually improve my performance or bottom line
– Attending team phone calls or meetings that rarely address important issues
– Entering activities/metrics into a system so management can use it for their own reasons
– Documenting phone calls and discussions in order to make sense of workplace politics
– Wasted time because another team coudn't/didn't do what they were supposed to on-time
The other 20% of the time I actually accomplish what I was hired to do and feel good about it.