Productive Hours in a Workday

From making cups of coffee and talking to colleagues via a Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) platform such as Ringover, to more modern-day temptations like social media or gaming, it can be a struggle to focus for eight hours a day.

And although a transition to remote work helped companies survive COVID-19 and employ a wider variety of people, many companies are anxious that workers at home are slacking. Amazon recently ruffled feathers by telling staff to get back to the office five days a week, reverting to its pre-pandemic policy.

In this study, being productive means being solely engaged in work-related tasks or work-related communications. We surveyed 1,063 employed Americans to talk honestly about their work productivity and found that the average worker is productive for four hours and 36 minutes a day or 57.5% of a typical workday. But what is the psychology behind our work productivity? What distracts us and why are we so distracted? And who is most likely to procrastinate at work?

Key findings:

• The average person is productive for four hours and 36 minutes of the working day–just 57.5% of a typical workday
• The average worker spends an hour a day browsing non-work-related topics
• Talking to friends and family (79.8%) is the most common non-work-related activity
• Half of people (46%) justify procrastination because their work is still completed on time
• Half (51.9%) have missed a time-sensitive meeting or message because they were distracted from work

The average person is productive for four hours and 36 minutes of the working day

When taking an average from all responses, the average person is productive for four hours and 36 minutes a day. Women were slightly more productive than men, by around 36 minutes per day (four hours 54 minutes compared to four hours 18 minutes respectively).

But do remote workers really work less productively, and if so by how much? On average, office workers were more productive by 36 minutes than remote workers. However, before businesses consider establishing a wholly in-office policy, hybrid workers were found to be the most productive at five hours and six minutes.

When asked whether people thought that younger generations are less productive, the majority (64.3%) said yes. Younger people were less likely to think so (41.6%), and those least likely were those aged 60-69 (68%). However, 18-27-year-olds were on average as productive (five hours and 18 minutes) as 60-69-year-olds (five hours and 12 minutes).

The most productive age group is the middle-aged workforce (44-59) with an average of five hours and 30 minutes, whereas the least productive age group is millennials (28-43) at four hours and 18 minutes.

C-suite employees and business owners have an extra hour of productivity per day

Taking into consideration the job seniority of the respondent, middle managers and associates estimated the lowest duration of productivity (four hours and 18 minutes) whereas C-Suite employees and business owners estimated they had considerably longer productive hours than the other respondents.

The average worker spends an hour a day browsing non-work-related topics

According to the study average, the average employee does 7.1 non-work related activities through a normal day. To dig into where all this missing time goes, we asked respondents to estimate how long they spent on common distractions. The non-work related activities workers admitted to spending the longest time on is browsing the internet (56 minutes), followed by communicating with friends and family (55 minutes) and discussing non-work related topics with colleagues (52 minutes).

It's worth noting that these reflect an average of all responses, even though some respondents might not partake in all activities meaning that you can't sum the average times to find the daily average for all activities.

Talking to friends and family (79.8%) is the most common way to procrastinate

But what behaviors do people admit to having done during work time, and what do people deem unacceptable distractions? To pinpoint the specific procrastination behaviors Americans admit to, a further 583 employed U.S. adults were surveyed. The most common ways these respondents procrastinate are communicating with friends and family (79.8%), online shopping (76.3%) and generally browsing the web (74.8%).

When it came to unacceptable behaviors people thought gaming during work time was the worst offense (39.2% of respondents found it unacceptable) – despite the fact that three in five (60.9%) admit to doing so. Having sex with someone was seen as the 2nd most unacceptable behavior (although 45.6% also claimed to have done so). Despite the fact that online shopping was the most commonly admitted behavior, 32.5% of people also thought it was an unacceptable distraction – the third biggest ‘sin' in the study.

Half of people (46%) justify procrastination because their work is completed on time

Most people, 76.8%, say they have struggled to focus at work–with 28.8% saying they often or always do. And more than half of workers (62%) sometimes or often feel anxious about how productive they are at work.

But not everyone feels bad or paranoid about their productivity. Only one in five (20.7%) always feel guilty for procrastinating at work, most people only sometimes do (41.7%) and one in four (25.7%) say they never feel guilt about engaging in personal activities during work time.

The most common justification people gave was that they make sure their tasks are completed on time (46%), that it's normal behavior (27.6%) and a quarter say they make up the time later on 24.4%.

But besides these justifications for procrastination, what other reasons did people give for losing focus at work? Hardly anyone procrastinates just because they can “get away with it” (6%)–the most commonly cited reasons people gave for becoming distracted were boredom (30%) or stress (30%).

The third most common reason is short attention span (23.1%). When asked whether the modern world has impacted our ability to concentrate, 73.9% said they believed digitalization has shortened our attention spans.

Half (51.9%) have missed a time-sensitive meeting or message because they were distracted from work

Half of respondents (51.9%) have missed a time-sensitive meeting or message because they were doing something that they shouldn't be. Half of people (54.1%) admit to lying to their boss about where they are or what they were doing, and again men were more likely to lie to their boss (65.17%) than women (42.31%).

Slightly less, 44.5% said they had been caught doing something they shouldn't at work. And 43% of respondents said they still continue with this behavior, even after being caught out. Men were more likely to still continue the behavior despite being caught (53.1%) compared to 34% of women.

Methodology

In October 2024 1,063 employed U.S. adults were surveyed about their productivity at work.

The age demographics of these respondents were:

• 18-27: 8.4%
• 28-43: 74.9%
• 44-59: 13.5%
• 60-69: 2.4%
• 70+: 0.8%

The gender demographics of these respondents were:

• Female: 46.5%
• Male: 52.4%
• Non Binary: 1.0%
• Prefer not to say: 0.1%

An additional 583 employed U.S. adults were surveyed in October 2024 specifically about the type of activities they engage in when procrastinating.

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