Like many organizations, Blue Sky Partners capped 2017 by doing some reflection. We counted our wins, analyzing missed opportunities, and tried to figure out how we could be just a bit better in 2018.

As part of that reflection, we took Peter Drucker’s advice and did a thorough audit of our time as individuals, and as a company.

What we found was pretty staggering: a large portion of our time was going to things that don’t move the ball forward on our long-, or even medium-term goals. Beyond that, there was a pretty sizable misalignment between the values we said were important to us as individuals and a company, and the things we were actually spending our time doing.

Apparently this isn’t just an us problem, either. This is a we problem. According to a study done by Atlassian, we spend 60% or less of our “work” time actually working, with most of our time spent responding to an overflowing inbox (36 times every hour), sitting in unnecessary meetings (31 hours of unproductive meetings every month), and getting tapped on the shoulder for no clear reason whatsoever (an average of 56 interruptions per employee, per day).