Where the Week Goes
How knowledge workers lose time before the real work starts. Each number is a range across primary studies.
about 8 to 10 of 40 hours in the week F-01 19–25%
of the work week goes to searching for information
McKinsey 2012 · Atlassian 2025 · Glean 2022 about 21 to 24 of 40 hours in the week F-02 53–61%
of the work day goes to coordinating work
Asana · McKinsey · Microsoft · Workfront 3 to 18 of 40 hours in the week F-03 3–18 h
a week in meetings; managers report about 22
Otter.ai 2022 · Atlassian 2022 · Doodle 2019 · NBER 2026to get back to an interrupted task
Mark et al. 2005 · Iqbal and Horvitz 2007 about 5 to 11 of 40 hours in the week F-05 13–28%
of the work week goes to email alone
McKinsey 2012 · Microsoft 2023 · Workfront 2019 · Adobe 2019 3 to 4 of 40 hours in the week F-06 3–4 h
a week lost getting back on track after switching apps
HBR 2022 · Qatalog 2021 about 5 to 6 of 40 hours in the week F-07 4.6–5.7 h
a week spent redoing work that already exists
Asana 2019, 2021 · Panopto 2018Each 5 by 8 grid is a 40-hour week: a row per day, a square per hour. The clock is one hour. Solid orange is the low end of the range across studies, light orange runs to the high end.
Methods, samples and links for every study are at evy.so/facts.