The smallest tasks on our to-do lists can often be the most draining.
Even just looking at the mountain of unread emails in your inbox or files that need to be decluttered on your desktop can trigger feelings of stress or anxiety.
Cecily Motley, the co-founder of Harriet, an AI-powered workplace assistant, calls these repetitive, tedious activities “vampire tasks” — and warns that getting bogged down by admin work is the number one thing that kills people’s productivity.
“It’s those dull, time-sucking tasks like scheduling meetings and responding to emails that drain your energy and take time away from deep-focus work or higher-value projects,” she explains. “That constant influx of administrative tasks can hurt productivity the most.”
The average person spends at least 21 hours per week doing admin in their jobs, according to a 2021 report from software start-up Brightpearl. Its researchers polled 2,000 adults and found that nearly 40% of people are “overwhelmed” by the amount of admin responsibilities they have to tackle at work.
Motley recommends three strategies to simplify “vampire tasks” and boost productivity:
Try timeboxing — but be realistic
Motley swears by timeboxing, or scheduling blocks of time on your calendar to focus on specific items on your to-do list and blocking out any distractions for the time limit you’ve assigned to that activity.
That includes scheduling “admin sessions” to create more distraction-free periods for important projects — Motley recommends saving these for a time when you’re normally less productive, whether it’s when you first log on or at the end of your workday.
Setting clear guidelines for how you spend your time and energy is the easiest and most effective way to boost productivity, recent research from Salesforce subsidiary Slack and research firm Qualtrics has found.
But timeboxing is only effective if you’re honest about the time required to complete each assignment, says Motley. You can time yourself completing…
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