It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
I wouldn't say it is wasted time since I'm not going to spend time on something that doesn't need doing or doesn't have value to me. That being said, there are certainly tedious aspects to any position. Paperwork, entering data, documentation, etc. are part of the actual job. They might not be the flashy exciting parts, but there is a purpose and value to doing them. Some of them take more time than we'd like, but that's part of personal development figuring out how to do them as efficiently as possible.
For instance, the time taken to read and respond here. It isn't helping my job per se, but I find value in taking a few minutes every once in a while to step back from whatever I'm focusing on to look at unrelated things. It helps my thought process and prevents me from constantly thinking in circles if I don't take that step back.
SOME meetings are time wasters; some people cannot efficiently run meetings, so they meander and digress into the weeds.
Everything else is part and parcel to your job; you cannot engineer without data, or documentation of what you are supposed to do and that documenting you completed your tasks and why decisions were made. Engineers are notoriously bad at documentation, resulting in much "wasted" time subsequently, when either that specific engineer or someone else tries to continue on with p!ss-poor documentation. The end result of that is many engineers would rather start from scratch rather than slog through poorly commented code, or designs that don't explain why certain design decisions were made. THAT is a SERIOUS time waster, and likely to result in a second, p!ss-poorly documented project. I've had a contract that completely failed because the engineer decided to start from scratch, dumping a decade of lessons-learned, and not understanding the requirements, resulting in a completely failed design that cost us a possibly lucrative follow-on contract.
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
