When you think about it, these findings make sense. If you feel you don’t have enough time in your workday to get everything done, there’s clearly something going wrong with how you’re working within your standard hours – and that translates to lower productivity. “Not having enough time in the day” was the number one reason people gave for working late, and 50% of those who work late reported having competing priorities.

Some major issues contributing to working late include having too many meetings (one in four workers said they spend too much time in meetings) and email overwhelm, both of which will wreck your productivity by preventing you from getting periods of deep work. The research found that more than two hours a day in meetings is the tipping point; if you’re regularly racking up more meeting time than that, it’s no wonder you struggle to get anything done.

So, we know from this research that too many of us feel like we don’t have enough time in the work day, and too many of us are working late to try to counteract that… which isn’t doing our wellbeing or our productivity any good. What can we do about it?

Always working late? It could be making you less productive