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2 min read
Constantly overwhelmed by your to-do list at work? It’s time to stop ‘vampire tasks’ from taking over your day.
Between filing documents, clearing emails, scheduling meetings, chasing co-workers, managing your calendar and filling out expenses, how much of your working day is taken up by… doing your job?
If you’re struggling to answer, you’re far from alone. The average person spends at least 21 hours a week completing admin tasks at work, 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.
So if your days feel long and stressful but you’re not entirely convinced you’ve been productive by the time you clock off, you could be getting bogged down by these ‘vampire tasks’.
What are vampire tasks?
The term, coined by Cecily Motley, co-founder of AI-powered workplace assistant Harriet, applies to all of the repetitive, tedious admin tasks that are often essential to our work yet can be extremely draining. Often, the smallest tasks on our to-do lists are the most stressful. Who hasn’t felt the anxious dread of a mountain of unread emails or piles of receipts that need to be filed?
“It’s those dull, time-sucking tasks like scheduling meetings and responding to emails that zap your energy and take time away from deep-focus work or higher-value projects,” Motley shared with CNBC. “That constant influx of administrative tasks can hurt productivity the most.”
Credit: Getty
Not only are meetings that could have been emails annoying interruptions to concentration, but overwhelm and productivity guilt is particularly prevalent in women too. According to research from Microsoft Surface, three in five women feel they are not able to do, be or achieve enough.
So how do we stop vampire tasks from decimating our productivity?
The bad news is that because they are often essential, there’s unfortunately no way to cut admin tasks from your working day completely. You can, however, set stricter boundaries to manage (and hopefully reduce) the stress they cause you.
How to use timeboxing to combat ‘vampire tasks’
If you’re not yet familiar with the term, timeboxing is one of the productivity buzzwords of 2024. The idea behind it is simple: you allocate a fixed time to a planned activity, for example reaching inbox zero. You work on the activity during the allocated time and stop once the time is up.
Nearly 40% of people are overwhelmed by admin
Setting clear boundaries around how you spend your time and energy is the easiest and most effective way to boost productivity, according to recent research from Slack. Because of this, timeboxing is not only beneficial for chronic procrastinators who struggle with getting started, it’s also great for perfectionists who spend too long labouring over one piece of work.
No more endless responding to Teams messages and following up on presentations: in 2024, it’s all about clearing your to-do list quickly and focusing on short bursts of deep work to get things done.
Images: Getty
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