The social sciences have already considered "time wasted" - from Dubin's observation in the mid-50s that work was not a "central life interest" for 75% of workers to Fleming and Cederdtrom's recent accounts of "dead men working", via Ackroyd and Thompson's typology of Organizational Misbehaviour. And of course, myriad critiques of the commodification and monetization of time inspired by F. W. Taylor and the Gilbreths that inspired the modern anxiety over "waste" and the pejoratization of idleness and reflection as "laziness". Bergson's account of time as a duration of tensions and relaxations, under pinning his contribution to creativity for which he won the Nobel prize, is well worth reconsidering.

Wasted time harms everyone in the workplace.

Absolutely, time wasted while conducting any type of research cannot be regained. Unless there is a deadline, one works in the speed of light under such circumstances!

Time, once spent, is irredeemable and hence should not be wasted at all

The question leaves open whether the "wasted time" refers to one's own life as a researcher - or to the development of the discipline. Experience is gained in any case. That is why the concept of wasted time is very relative. One, for example, completely misses one's own life goal, which one originally set oneself, and regards the invested time as "wasted". But one can also be glad that this has happened.

I second the opinion of @Hein Retter, this is a relative concept, and some "off time" may even protect us from burn out, that may eventually lead to more productivity on the long term!

Yes, Time management is the key to successful career,

The social sciences have already considered "time wasted" - from Dubin's observation in the mid-50s that work was not a "central life interest" for 75% of workers to Fleming and Cederdtrom's recent accounts of "dead men working", via Ackroyd and Thompson's typology of Organizational Misbehaviour. And of course, myriad critiques of the commodification and monetization of time inspired by F. W. Taylor and the Gilbreths that inspired the modern anxiety over "waste" and the pejoratization of idleness and reflection as "laziness". Bergson's account of time as a duration of tensions and relaxations, under pinning his contribution to creativity for which he won the Nobel prize, is well worth reconsidering.

Thank you, all for your answers. They are very useful for me, especially because I had a different approach when I started the conversation. As an economist with research interest in social fields, I saw the sum of individual's wasted time, like a potential resources not enough utilized.

I know people whose lives in the first three decades were for the most part wasted time, if you look back at them in your own judgement. But these people have succeeded in everything that they have set themselves as the goal of their professional and private lives - and many more wishes have come true than one had ever dared to hope for in his youth.

My approach is based on replacing "wasted time" with "working time" at society level. Unemployed, NEET people, or people working in part-time jobs cause the incomplete use of working time.

In many cases, a creative work requiring profound professional skills and a positive prior experience require thorough, mental analyses, extensive notes, calculations, meetings, and calls - and all of that and some more are just only to get familiar with the problem. Is that time wasted?

Certainly not, and there is no standard time can be assessed and calculated here. Each professional has a unique skill and knowledge set. Those people are a bad food for statistical analyses in social analyses of any kind.

Of course, some say that "time is money"!

I hope the period of social sciences that we are live for the lasts centuries finished with the idea to create a new idea of human been, this because we know the human been stay at the end of the firth circle of technology without intangible communication; we are at the period that human been be conscious of their own capabilities for inmaterial communication

Would it include Thorstein Veblen's instinct of idle curiosity?

The notion of a wasted time is to be clarified. In a case of a big project, say building a new object, or developing a new technology, etc., the management of the project may make mistakes leading to lost time in a supply chain management, or hiring people of right qualification, or subcontracting unreliable vendors, etc..

All of that may lead to time waste and disconnects, and loose ends of different type, and eventually many people objectively loose time due to mistakes at the top, or middle, or first line management levels. On the other hand, there are jobs where a person is a small wheel in a big conveyer machine - like a post office workers, of delivery services, etc. - people cannot do mechanical, low intelligence job in an uninterrupted manner. It drives people crazy and bad for their mental health. Most of similar jobs will be washed out by artificial intelligence developments.

That direction is healing and killing at the same time - it makes businesses more efficient, but eliminates human occupied jobs, and eventually will lead to a massive unemployment. So it is not clear what is better - to allow some loose time for these type workers or eliminate their positions altogether. In summary, the question of working time efficiency for society and businesses is full of social controversies, real management issues, and a society genesis as a whole trend.

Two more thoughts: (1) John Kenneth Galbraith, following Veblen, highlighted how idleness is considered shameful for common people but enviable and "cool" for the very rich (cf. his last book, The Economics of Innocent Fraud, 2004); (2) paying heed to Gestalt psychology's insights about insights, "wasted time" may not be a waste of time, if it is the time when the latent reconfiguration of information occurs, which leads eventually to solving problems.

Hi!

Interesting - time is both very easy and very complex, at the same time (sic).

I am not an expert in exactly this with "wasted time" in the workplace or national economy, but am specialised in time and process understanding of ICTs in education.

Anyway, what was very important for me when beginning to think of time in social science was new concepts, new ways of thinking of time, new perspectives. There is a lot in physics of course, but rather complex stuff. For social science and time I highly recommend Barbara Adam and her work with "Social theory of time". She introduces new concepts as "timescapes" and "timeprints". She also criticises social science researchers for often taking time issues too easy: "...taking time seriously is not like a cooking recipe: take space and matter, add on time and stir." See a short paper here http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;?doi=10.1.1.594.1289&rep=rep1&type=pdf