What Is Your Biggest Office Productivity Killer?

Offices can be a source of distraction. While stylish decor and open workplace plans can cause your attention to wander, there are other productivity killers that are considerably more common. So, what's causing you to have a bad day at work?

Meetings can stifle productivity in the workplace for many people. You have to concentrate on finishing a project or avoiding starting a new one while in the meeting, ensuring that everyone knows you're unavailable, focusing on whatever the meeting is about, and then returning to your desk to try to pick up where you left off... all while hoping no one dumped a new load of work in your lap while you were in the meeting room.

Meetings also rarely achieve much. Meetings are a core productivity problem for 41.3 percent of engineers in the current Stack Overflow Developer Survey (it was the highest-percentage response to a question about productivity-killers).

It's also possible that the atmosphere in your office is toxic. Snide coworkers, cliques you're not a member of, and managers who are constantly at odds with one another, forcing everyone to pick sides. It's awful, and having to think about what hot garbage your office is going to throw at you on any given day is a huge distraction.

And while we're on the subject of diversions, how about distractions? Random people talking too loudly in open spaces, folks you sit next to continually goofing off, in-office TVs blaring, ping pong tables in use near you; the little things can build up to a generally distracting office. Your business may be attempting to foster a "cool" culture, but it's backfiring.

Your coworkers could be sabotaging your productivity and output. This is especially apparent when there is no clear direction and your product roadmap is a catch-as-catch-can situation before to shipping. This permits certain members of the team to raise their hands in the air while others bury their noses in a keyboard in order to get things done.

Management is a key aspect of a bad team structure. Your boss's goals may be good, but the way they're carried out might sabotage productivity. This is especially apparent when you sit through meetings with no conclusion and work with a team that lacks focus. Instead of keeping the trains on time, your supervisor may be micromanaging or completely disregarding you and your coworkers.

All of these productivity killers are accurate, but we want to know which one you think is the worst.

Related: 5 Effective Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder