homework and time management statistics

11 Surprising Homework Statistics, Facts & Data

The age-old question of whether homework is good or bad for students is unanswerable because there are so many “ it depends ” factors.

For example, it depends on the age of the child, the type of homework being assigned, and even the child’s needs.

There are also many conflicting reports on whether homework is good or bad. This is a topic that largely relies on data interpretation for the researcher to come to their conclusions.

To cut through some of the fog, below I’ve outlined some great homework statistics that can help us understand the effects of homework on children.

Homework Statistics List

1. 45% of parents think homework is too easy for their children.

A study by the Center for American Progress found that parents are almost twice as likely to believe their children’s homework is too easy than to disagree with that statement.

Here are the figures for math homework:

• 46% of parents think their child’s math homework is too easy.
• 25% of parents think their child’s math homework is not too easy.
• 29% of parents offered no opinion.

Here are the figures for language arts homework:

• 44% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is too easy.
• 28% of parents think their child’s language arts homework is not too easy.
• 28% of parents offered no opinion.

These findings are based on online surveys of 372 parents of school-aged children conducted in 2018.

2. 93% of Fourth Grade Children Worldwide are Assigned Homework

The prestigious worldwide math assessment Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) took a survey of worldwide homework trends in 2007. Their study concluded that 93% of fourth-grade children are regularly assigned homework, while just 7% never or rarely have homework assigned.

3. 17% of Teens Regularly Miss Homework due to Lack of High-Speed Internet Access

A 2018 Pew Research poll of 743 US teens found that 17%, or almost 2 in every 5 students, regularly struggled to complete homework because they didn’t have reliable access to the internet.

This figure rose to 25% of Black American teens and 24% of teens whose families have an income of less than $30,000 per year.

4. Parents Spend 6.7 Hours Per Week on their Children’s Homework

A 2018 study of 27,500 parents around the world found that the average amount of time parents spend on homework with their child is 6.7 hours per week. Furthermore, 25% of parents spend more than 7 hours per week on their child’s homework.

American parents spend slightly below average at 6.2 hours per week, while Indian parents spend 12 hours per week and Japanese parents spend 2.6 hours per week.

5. Students in High-Performing High Schools Spend on Average 3.1 Hours per night Doing Homework

A study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) conducted a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California. 

Across these high-performing schools, students self-reported that they did 3.1 hours per night of homework.

Graduates from those schools also ended up going on to college 93% of the time.

6. One to Two Hours is the Optimal Duration for Homework

A 2012 peer-reviewed study in the High School Journal found that students who conducted between one and two hours achieved higher results in tests than any other group.

However, the authors were quick to highlight that this “t is an oversimplification of a much more complex problem.” I’m inclined to agree. The greater variable is likely the quality of the homework than time spent on it.

Nevertheless, one result was unequivocal: that some homework is better than none at all : “students who complete any amount of homework earn higher test scores than their peers who do not complete homework.”

7. 74% of Teens cite Homework as a Source of Stress

A study by the Better Sleep Council found that homework is a source of stress for 74% of students. Only school grades, at 75%, rated higher in the study.

That figure rises for girls, with 80% of girls citing homework as a source of stress.

Similarly, the study by Galloway, Conner & Pope (2013) found that 56% of students cite homework as a “primary stressor” in their lives.

8. US Teens Spend more than 15 Hours per Week on Homework

The same study by the Better Sleep Council also found that US teens spend over 2 hours per school night on homework, and overall this added up to over 15 hours per week.

Surprisingly, 4% of US teens say they do more than 6 hours of homework per night. That’s almost as much homework as there are hours in the school day.

The only activity that teens self-reported as doing more than homework was engaging in electronics, which included using phones, playing video games, and watching TV.

9. The 10-Minute Rule

The National Education Association (USA) endorses the concept of doing 10 minutes of homework per night per grade.

For example, if you are in 3rd grade, you should do 30 minutes of homework per night. If you are in 4th grade, you should do 40 minutes of homework per night.

However, this ‘rule’ appears not to be based in sound research. Nevertheless, it is true that homework benefits (no matter the quality of the homework) will likely wane after 2 hours (120 minutes) per night, which would be the NEA guidelines’ peak in grade 12.

10. 21.9% of Parents are Too Busy for their Children’s Homework

An online poll of nearly 300 parents found that 21.9% are too busy to review their children’s homework. On top of this, 31.6% of parents do not look at their children’s homework because their children do not want their help. For these parents, their children’s unwillingness to accept their support is a key source of frustration.

11. 46.5% of Parents find Homework too Hard

The same online poll of parents of children from grades 1 to 12 also found that many parents struggle to help their children with homework because parents find it confusing themselves. Unfortunately, the study did not ask the age of the students so more data is required here to get a full picture of the issue.

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Interpreting the Data

Unfortunately, homework is one of those topics that can be interpreted by different people pursuing differing agendas. All studies of homework have a wide range of variables, such as:

• What age were the children in the study?
• What was the homework they were assigned?
• What tools were available to them?
• What were the cultural attitudes to homework and how did they impact the study?
• Is the study replicable?

The more questions we ask about the data, the more we realize that it’s hard to come to firm conclusions about the pros and cons of homework .

Furthermore, questions about the opportunity cost of homework remain. Even if homework is good for children’s test scores, is it worthwhile if the children consequently do less exercise or experience more stress?

Thus, this ends up becoming a largely qualitative exercise. If parents and teachers zoom in on an individual child’s needs, they’ll be able to more effectively understand how much homework a child needs as well as the type of homework they should be assigned.

Related: Funny Homework Excuses

The debate over whether homework should be banned will not be resolved with these homework statistics. But, these facts and figures can help you to pursue a position in a school debate on the topic – and with that, I hope your debate goes well and you develop some great debating skills!

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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Time management statistics everyone should know in 2023 (and beyond)

How many times have you wished for a day to last longer?

If you often find yourself in a situation where there simply is no time to perform tasks, don't worry — time management is both the problem and the solution.

Did you know that a whopping 82% of people don't have a dedicated time management system? We believe it's a waste of great potential.

However, improving time management is a long-term goal as it includes a wide and complex range of skills in several phases.

As every person is unique, the actual adaptation period can significantly vary — but bear in mind that every skill can be learned . Once you commit, the advantages are too obvious to stop working on it.

That's why we've compiled the ultimate list of time management statistics — to help you understand the impact of time management on your personal and professional life , and achieve a balance between the two.

General and global statistics of time management

" They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. ” — Andy Warhol

This segment will introduce you to the topic and point out what's relevant for time management on a global scale. After all, one's habits are the foundation of time management — so let's get some perspective.

So, why should anyone devote their attention to time management ? According to statistics on the subject, some of the core benefits of being a good time manager are:

• Improved focus,
• Higher quality of work,
• Reduced stress levels, and
• A better sleep pattern.

Statistics about time management and the Internet

The World Wide Web can be an amazing resource for improvement and learning.

However, we've all encountered wasting too much time browsing, streaming, or scrolling through our social media feeds, right?

Without a proper time management system, it's getting harder to avoid various distractions by the day.

That's mostly due to technological advances .

More specifically, the 2 factors that enable being online at all times, thus leading to us being more easily distracted are:

• Highly increased availability of smart devices, and
• High-speed internet connection.

The average daily time a person spends online is close to 7 hours

The latest data points to a stunning 62.5% of the world's population being regular internet users. That's 4.95 billion people whose habits are, no doubt, altered by the fact.

The same research shows the adoption rates have skyrocketed as the remote work model continues being on the rise — in 2022, Y-o-Y growth was estimated at 4%. In other words, there were 192 million more internet users than in 2021.

Just by looking at the numbers it seems like being in control of our own schedule and priorities and improving time management skills is challenging. However, most people claim they feel more productive if they manage their own time and workload.

One of the statistics about time management from the same report reveals the average time a person spends online is 6 hours and 58 minutes .

The penetration rate of internet users is the highest in Northern Europe — a whopping 98%, while it's lowest in Middle Africa — only 24%.

Check out the top 10 list of territories with the highest penetration rate.

Fun fact — the number of social media users is 4.62 billion, meaning that 93.4% of internet users have a profile on at least one social network.

While having many benefits, such platforms can be a significant source of distraction, so we suggest muting your notifications while working to avoid large chunks of time spent procrastinating.

Internet users spend 223 minutes per day online on their smartphones

Let's mention another prevailing source of distraction — our smartphones. The device has evolved as our screens have become larger and our internet connection better.

The report we've mentioned above also reveals — a stunning 92.1% of internet users are regularly online on their mobile devices.

The explanation is simple — smartphones and tablets are practical when we're on the go. The thing is, most of us don't use them only for relevant matters — nor only on the go.

So the average daily time people spend online on their mobile devices is 3 hours and 43 minutes .

Moreover, the average mobile connection speed reported was 69.92% for download and 14.01% for upload.

Before such high-speed connections, internet use was limited to the essentials, such as finding a phone number, an address, or checking our inbox. But now, when we can effortlessly stream our favorite TV shows on Netflix, it's become fairly easy to lose sight of our priorities.

Only 30% of internet users list business-related research among primary reasons of use

The data on primary reasons people use the Internet tells us a lot about intent, common behavior, and thus habits of internet users.

The list from the 2022 Digital Global Report goes into more detail on the reasons for internet use.

As you can see above, time management statistics regarding our virtual presence point to education, business, and organization purposes, all being on the low end of the list. Ouch!

Moreover, you can also notice that not too many of the major reasons are considered productive.

What matters the most in time management?

In order to identify inefficiency and get the most out of your day, you must determine your priorities .

Writing everything down is a simple solution and a significant starting point, sure.

But, only a proper system, including regular time audits, has the potential to bring your time management skills to the next level.

Let's see how many people bother to do that.

A dedicated Time Management System (TMS) — only 18% of people report having one

According to research by Development Academy , a staggering 82% of people don't use any time management system.

Bear in mind that a simple to-do or a to-don't list is not a proper system due to the lack of complexity and prioritization of tasks.

Still, 33% reported relying on simple to-do lists to manage their work.

Furthermore, 25% said they simply first deal with what feels most important, while 24% rely on their email inboxes to manage their priorities and, in accordance, their time.

Writing a schedule in a diary or a planner is what around 12% reported doing — and this does count as a TM system.

Time management statistics also reveal that the remaining 6% use specific methods, mentioned by their popularity, in the declining order:

• Timeboxing ,
• Pomodoro technique ,
• Eisenhower matrix , and
• Eat that frog .

According to the rest of their answers, the Eisenhower matrix was the most successful one.

Time audits — only 20% of people conduct them

To put it simply, a time audit refers to a process of tracking what you've done in a specific period of time.

It's the first step in developing and mastering time management skills .

Once you're able to identify how long it takes you to perform a task, it becomes much easier to understand your pace and plan your schedule in advance.

However, time tracking statistics indicate that 49% of people never carried out a time audit.

The other 31% said they do it occasionally, while only 20% do so regularly.

Time audits will also help you understand your behavior patterns, find your biological prime time, and make precise time‌ estimates at work .

Time audits start with tracking time, so a solution such as Clockify can help you conduct audits, but also become more accountable and improve your daily routine.

You'll be able to easily:

• Set your daily goals ,
• Monitor your productivity levels,
• Improve your efficiency, and much more.

Proper sleep — an average person in the US sleeps less than 7 hours a day

Many aspects of time management are directly related to overall cultural differences, including the very perception of time .

However, one thing is evident, regardless of those different perceptions of time — the connection between getting enough sleep and happiness. It is proven in numerous studies, and the experts suggest that adults should sleep between 7 and 9 hours .

This is an important aspect of time management, and the vital conclusion is — getting a good night's sleep can make a huge difference .

Additionally, there's a correlation between feeling happy and getting enough sleep . The explanation is simple — people who are happy are less likely to indulge in mind-wandering activities (especially when they go to bed), and are more likely to be productive.

According to research by Sleep Score Labs , people in Finland get the most sleep per night — 7 hours and 6 minutes. Consequently, they also have the highest Happiness Score — 7.8 out of 8.

In contrast, with a score of only 5.9, people in Japan sleep considerably less — 6 hours and 23 minutes.

The US is somewhere in between, so there's definitely room for improvement. The average time is 6 hours and 47 minutes per night and a score of 6.9.

Statistics on time management at work

When it comes to business, the saying " Time is money " can be applied at all times. Therefore, productivity and adequate task prioritization are arguably the key aspects of success.

Moreover, business owners who leverage the power of team time management apps have higher:

• Employee productivity and morale,
• Employee satisfaction and retention, and
• Revenue levels.

Now let's walk a mile each in both employee's shoes and employer's — by observing statistics on time management at work.

Time management statistics for employees

" All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. " — J.R.R. Tolkien

There are many things that individual employees can do to improve their daily effectiveness at work.

However, you can already conclude from the data above that's often not the case.

The data below indicates that it's a type of decision that no one can really force on anybody else.

Office-based employees spend 2 hours per day browsing through their email inbox

Independent reports study conducted in the UK examined the habits of 2,000 office workers and found that the time wasted on emails equals 30 working days per year .

That's a whole month of unproductive behavior, easily explained by the average of 2 hours per day spent browsing through the inbox.

Approximately half of that time is spent on:

• Emails that could've been a quick call,
• Accidentally re-reading old emails, and
• Checking our inboxes for new messages.

Interestingly, more than half (54%) admitted they often lose focus because they check their emails too often — but at the same time, they can't stop. That's the case with habits in general, even for those that were not intentionally developed.

Supporting the claim, McKinsey analysis also suggests that the average worker spends 28% of their time reading and answering emails.

Apart from email, poor time management statistics point to 2 other common issues that negatively affect this set of skills:

• 20% of respondents struggle with their performance due to the lack of IT knowledge, and
• 15% report being too embarrassed to ask for help while stuck with an office suite-related issue.

People who properly manage their valuable time won't allocate any of it to being confused if a team member can help.

Furthermore, that says a lot about the personality type, as ambitious people always want to learn how to do something, especially if it's relevant to their role at work.

26% of work ends up being done outside of office hours

Bringing work home or staying after hours is a common problem that affects one's mental health and leads to burnout .

Not only that, but it can also trigger further complications in other life aspects, such as:

• Interpersonal relationships,
• Social life,
• Time for hobbies, and
• Self-improvement time.

So arguably, the whole point of perfecting time management is to achieve the ideal work-life balance .

It's difficult to imagine a world where the average workload is so unrealistic that over a quarter (26%) of it needs to be done outside of work hours.

Results from the time management report mentioned in a Forbes article provide the explanation as well — on average, employees spend 21% of their work hours on:

• Entertainment,
• Social media, and

When you add procrastination between tasks, inefficient multitasking , and other factors of poor time management into the equation, the math seems right.

Chatty coworkers are the most common distraction at work

Chatting with colleagues is a common reason for procrastination at work — and the survey results found on Statista show that 80% of workers agree about this.

Another reason is office noise, closely followed by changes at work. Meetings and social media complete the top 5 list.

Needless to say, people with great time management skills are more responsible and won't make room for (at least some of) the mentioned distractions.

In the US, the average time at work per year is 1,791 hours

Due to various cultural, geopolitical, and economic factors, different regions have different standards of what counts as a regular workload per week.

For this reason, the number of hours people work varies by country and is the lowest in Germany — 1,349 hours per year, or 25.9 hours per week on average.

Some other countries with working weeks on the lower end are:

• France — 1,490 hours per week,
• The Netherlands — 1,497 hours per week, and
• The UK — 1,575.6 hours per week.

On the other hand, the one with the highest average is Turkey with a worrying amount of 2,288 hours. The US is somewhere in between, with an average of 1,791 hours.

As you can see, developing time management skills depends on the region as well, as cultural values and the very perception of time differ. As a consequence, the approach to tracking time differs as well — Western cultures tend to do so by the clock, while Eastern focus on events and are more concerned with the context.

So, two people with the exact same time management skills will be perceived differently in different parts of the world.

79% of employees don't feel engaged at work

Now let's check out how negative emotions (such as anger, sadness, worry, and stress) impact our work, according to Gallup's annual global report .

79% of workers reported they were either actively disengaged or not engaged enough at work, so productivity levels dropped significantly.

It is estimated that this low engagement costs the global economy $7.8 trillion, or around 11% of the Gross Domestic Product.

Workplace culture surely matters here, but it's also up to employees to be proactive and start measuring their productivity and efficiency .

44% of employees feel stress on a daily basis

Stress is one of the most common consequences of poor time management.

As the deadline gets closer, anxiety levels increase, especially for those who don't have an exact plan.

The previously mentioned Gallup's report also shows some eye-opening statistics about time management and stress — 44% of workers said they are trying to cope with stress daily, which is an all-time high.

Here's what else employees worldwide report feeling on a daily basis:

• Worry — 40%,
• Anger — 21%, and
• Sadness — 23%.

The formulation of the question makes these numbers even more problematic, as everyone was asked if they'd experienced said feelings "a lot."

Time management statistics for business owners

With great power comes great responsibility — and business owners are well aware of this fact. Creating a positive, goal-oriented environment that will encourage other employees to thrive is not easy.

Every decision a leader makes ought to align with the uniquely crafted company values, as it will affect team connectivity and each employee.

Luckily for business owners, there are various solutions available to help them establish certain time management standards within the company.

Here's to name a few of those solutions:

• Tracking time and productivity,
• Leveraging the power of automation, and
• Leading by example.

Leaders work on close to 80% of weekends

Have you heard the saying there's no rest for the wicked? Evidently, it applies to the wicked and CEOs.

According to the results from one study , leaders spend 9.7 hours (on average) working on weekdays and 62.5 hours total per week.

The number implies they also work on weekends, which was the case for 79% of participants.

Moreover, the percentage of those who also work during their vacation days is almost as high — 70%.

According to the stats, CEOs attend 37 business meetings per week on average, which consume about 72% of their time.

Here's what they reported about the usual length of meetings:

• 1+ hour — 38%,
• Approximately 1 hour — 32%, and
• Less than 1 hour — 30%.

87% of US employees who are offered flexible work gladly embrace the opportunity

A fixed schedule may be beneficial, but not for everyone. For example, many people with young children find the 9-to-5 schedule problematic and prefer starting earlier.

That's why close to 90% of US employees who were given the option of flexible work took their employers up on that offer, according to the latest McKinsey report .

There is an abundance of benefits that come with flexible working hours and because of that the increasing number of employees expect at least some level of flexibility at work.

It's no wonder, especially if we take into account the availability of time management apps that can help both employers and employees get and stay organized.

As a matter of fact, an article published in Entrepreneur mentions several additional studies that all suggest " The days of nine to five, Monday to Friday work schedules are numbered. "

Collab tools are the most important aspect of flexible work for 36.77% of companies

A recent report by PwC examined what matters the most for flexible and remote work environments. Some things related to workforce management may be difficult to achieve when coworkers are not in the office, perhaps not even in the same time zone .

Luckily we're living in the digital age.

Besides, connecting via virtual channels reduces several distractions — such as office noise and chatting with colleagues.

The top spot for future investments in this segment went to connection tools (46.42%). We're talking about videoconferencing and chat tools such as Skype or Zoom, aside from email.

The second most important category (36.77%) was content collaboration tools such as Slack, Trello, Pumble , Teams, etc.

The exact same percentage (36.77%) reported no need for future investments because they already have and use those tools.

For 44% of organizations, lack of funds is the biggest obstacle in tracking productivity

Tracking your productivity levels helps you find segments of the day when you can be fully focused.

Organizations that systematically measure and analyze this segment have a better understanding of their internal operation, which results in better use of their potential.

Other stats from the PwC report we've mentioned above show financial matters are the biggest obstacle in tracking productivity, in this case, for 44%.

Other relevant obstacles were:

• Time restraint (39%),
• Employee resistance (38%),
• Resources distributed to crisis management (36%),
• Lack of other resources (34%),
• Technology being too complicated (33%), and
• The lack of technology tools (28%).

Organizations valued over $5 billion track their productivity more often

We've already mentioned that successful people share many values and habits, so it's not surprising that successful organizations use the same practices as well.

In this case, what they have in common is being on top of the latest trends, meaning they are always eager to improve.

When it comes to the frequency of productivity audits, 11% of organizations whose value doesn't exceed $5 billion report conducting them on an hourly basis, measuring the productivity of a specific task.

Confirming the direct relation of time management and success, the same PwC report indicates 25% of organizations valued at over $5 billion conduct hourly tracking.

Multiple follow-up studies revealed another supporting claim — 75% of poorly performing employees who took specific actions (over the course of 6 months or less) rose to acceptable levels, or even higher.

That's the power of proper time and productivity management.

71% of US companies report embracing agile ways of working

Agile working practices are complex and highly dependent on the industry — even a specific organization — but essentially refer to flexibility.

The method differs from the traditional one in the sense that it's not a linear process, but rather a loop of regular evaluations and adjustments. The possibility of remote work, for example, is one of the aspects of agile project management .

In the US, 71% of organizations have adopted this method, according to the Capterra report.

Statistics on time management for students

" Better three hours too soon than one minute too late. " — William Shakespeare

Effective time management matters in every stage of life, but it's especially relevant during high school and college.

Teenagers and young adults are still developing habits, so it's easier for them to learn.

Moreover, their approach to organization and structure has a major impact on their overall growth and self-image . The discipline results in more leisure time and makes the academic experience less stressful.

Furthermore, it also strengthens their values and helps them adapt to the responsibilities once they start working.

Statistics on students' time management skills

Despite being objectively easier for students to adopt habits, socialization and other fun activities can often be their priority during this period.

However, those who learn to effectively manage their schedule and responsibilities from an early age actually have more time for themselves.

Moreover, the lack of stress contributes to that time being of higher quality.

54% of college students think better organizational skills would improve their performance

It's proven that organizational skills are of utmost importance for various aspects of life — especially when it comes to academic studies and later careers.

However, college student time management statistics show that 47% believe that the level of education on the topic is insufficient .

Despite being digital natives, 48% of those with a system manage their tasks by writing them down by hand.

More than half, 54% exactly, said their grades and overall performance would be better if they had better organizational skills.

88% of college students wish to improve their time management skills

Following the data from the previous statistics, once students get to experience higher-level academic requirements, too many end up feeling inadequate.

88% report wanting to improve their time management and organizational skills. After all, only 21.7% said they use database software for organizing their assignments, while another 23% just memorize the to-do list in their head.

Their values are often based on failure and success binary opposition — however, as we've mentioned, that fear of failure often results in procrastination .

Statistics on student procrastination

As we've seen earlier, the topic of procrastination is closely connected to time management skills.

When a task has an allocated time slot within a day, people are more likely to finish it — to avoid disrupting their schedules.

Academic procrastination is the subcategory specifically relevant for students. This phenomenon is defined as the delay in starting or finalizing an academic assignment, and it goes hand in hand with academic burnout .

The majority of students struggle with procrastination

Even though different studies point to different percentages, one thing is for sure — most college students procrastinate.

The lowest percentage of students who procrastinate (mentioned in a study by Rozental and Carlbring from 2014 ) was around 50%, while the highest ( Steel, 2007) went up to a whopping 95%.

There are several possible explanations for such a large gap in the percentage of students who procrastinate. It may simply be that different target groups had different habits.

However, it may also be that the lower percentage had something to do with the fact that one research was conducted 7 years later.

So, another logical conclusion would be that technological advancements made the academic experience easier, in a way.

Here's to name a few contributing factors that help ease the experience:

• The availability of resources,
• Time tracking apps and programs, and
• Collaboration tools.

Interestingly, one of the more recent studies indicates that the percentage of academic procrastinators is somewhere between the two aforementioned. The results point to 70-75% of students having the tendency to postpone their academic tasks and activities.

Now let's see why the tendency occurs.

Supported by an abundance of research and studies, time management in college statistics point to the fear of failure as the primary reason for academic procrastination .

Some of the main indicators that are often cited are:

• An irregular sleep pattern,
• Poor quality of sleep,
• Higher stress levels, and
• Feelings of guilt, inadequacy, confusion, anxiety, and even depression.

Developing time management skills can thus drastically boost one's potential to succeed in their academic life. Moreover, as you can conclude from the negative aspects we've mentioned, it's not only about academic life but rather the structure that builds confidence and a positive self-image.

58% of students submit the assignments within the last 24 hours of the deadline

Here, it seems appropriate to mention the saying: " Deadline is the best motivation. "

Regardless of how the students had used the time in between, when given a full week to complete a task, 58% submitted it on the last day .

It's all about self-regulation.

Further analysis of the results showed that the procrastinators also had significantly lower scores .

Those results show that 76% of students who submitted their assignments early got higher scores (A or B). On the other hand, this was the case for only 60% of the procrastinators.

There are several reasons why early submitters have higher performance:

• When any given task is divided into smaller segments, it's easier to remain motivated and focused. Moreover, whenever a segment is completed, it is followed by a feeling of satisfaction.
• In most cases, the given tasks are related to parts of the curriculum that are still fresh in the students' minds.
• There's always room for improvement. If a student completes the task on day 3 and sleeps on it before submission, they might come up with an idea on how to make it better.

Recognition is the best motivation for overcoming procrastination

So, what's the solution to procrastination?

This can vary depending on the type of motivation that a certain personality type values more — intrinsic or extrinsic.

Procrastination statistics from a recent study on motivational factors indicate that receiving recognition — a traditionally extrinsic motivator — was ranked at the top for 49% of students.

Then we have the practical study approach , which breaks the procrastination pattern for 22% of students, followed by collaborative work with 18% of students.

However, that's exactly the thing you should do if you want to improve and, at some point, master time management skills — you ought to learn that recognition doesn't have to be external .

It goes without saying that the external type, especially coming from a person in a superior position (teacher, manager at work, parent, etc.), is more effective.

Yet, recognizing your own achievements, no matter how small they seem, will bring your mindset to another level.

One way to start with this kind of positive approach is to introduce a reward system .

If there's a proper correlation between the time and cognitive effort invested in a task and the reward, your internal motivation will almost certainly reach the level of external motivation.

Your favorite candy bar or an episode of a TV show is a great choice for smaller tasks, while a full treat-yourself-pampering-mode-day is great for larger projects or exams.

It simply works.

Interesting time management statistics

" Time is the longest distance between two places. " — Tennessee Williams

Did you know that highly successful people have numerous habits in common, such as devoting 15 to 30 minutes a day to focused thinking ?

In the following segment, we'll cover some interesting details and statistics regarding the topic.

The positive impact of properly managing your time

The baseline of all time management skills is self-discipline , or a commitment to develop and stick to healthy habits. Only once we take control of our time can we actually achieve a balance between different aspects of our lives.

So, keeping up with your deadlines at work will result in more quality time to, for example, pursue new hobbies and strengthen your personal relationships in your free time.

That also means your stress levels will be reduced, and you'll feel more confident and more capable to achieve your goals.

Countries with shorter working hours or a 4-day week have the happiest citizens

The data from the latest World Happiness Report published in 2022 shows that the truth is the opposite of popular but outdated beliefs about people living in Nordic countries.

The uncorroborated narrative claims that Nordic people are prone to depression and have the highest suicide rate.

However, that's not the case, and the people living over there are actually thriving. As a matter of fact, 3 out of 5 countries with the happiest citizens are Nordic.

The list of overall satisfaction rates for the top 5 goes as follows:

• Finland (7.821 out of 8),
• Denmark (7.636),
• Iceland (7.557),
• Switzerland (7.512), and
• Netherlands (7.415).

Additionally, it's the Nordic countries that introduced numerous studies on the 4-day week that resulted in increased productivity and happiness among the employees.

For example, successful results from a trial in Iceland led to 86% of the country's workforce either working shorter hours or gaining the right to do so in the near future.

Regular time slots for socialization are an important aspect of time management

Planning your weekly schedule should always include time for socialization.

Allocating a portion of each day to a simple activity such as, taking a walk , is a real serotonin booster.

The same research with a sample of 2.3 million people indicates that taking a hike or a walk on your own raises mood by 2%. If that activity is shared with a friend, the percentage is at 7.5% and even higher, and 8.9% if shared with a partner.

Over 350 genetic factors impact one's cognitive ability during the day

Society as a whole is based on an early bird's schedule , surely — but don't stress too much if you're a night owl .

Of course, the circadian rhythm is a matter of fact, but our internal clocks are complex and equally important. A study of genome-wide data of almost 700,000 participants proved that the reason is a variation in the chronotype of an individual.

The number of genetic factors that will determine when a person feels energized the most is 351. So, it turns out that there's no one-size-fits-all magic formula when it comes to proper time management, and we should plan our schedules in accordance with our internal clocks instead.

Allocate enough time to sleep to avoid several health conditions

On average, it's estimated that people who complete all of the REM and non-REM stages during one night dream for 2 full hours.

This matters because dreaming helps people process and deal with their emotions. Admittedly, you don't have to plan or schedule these hours, but this is just one more example of how a consistent sleep pattern benefits mental health.

Many studies focused on a regular sleep pattern and how the lack of it reflects badly on our physical and mental health. We'll stick with a study that examined the impact of sleep deprivation on emotions and social interactions .

The results once again underline the importance of getting enough sleep. It's much easier to lose focus and get distracted if one hasn't processed their emotions, which badly reflects on your decisions.

Moreover, the results indicate that sleep deprivation leads to a lower understanding of:

• Social cues, and
• Facial expressions.

That can cause problems at the workplace — even if you've allocated time for work properly.

This is especially relevant for planning and scheduling meetings, as the two factors play a major role in this type of social interaction.

Other results from the same study once again underline the importance of being well-rested. Participants who slept only 4.5 hours per night reported increased appetite and hunger. That wasn't the case for the ones who slept for 8.5 hours.

All things considered, our physical and cognitive capabilities are highly dependent on sleep, and the lack of consistency in our sleep patterns can result in severe problems.

That's why it's vital for our well-being to adequately allocate enough time to sleep and be consistent.

Statistics on how people deal with poor time management

Not being able to manage time properly can have a major impact on one's overall well-being, including both physical and mental health.

Many people don't realize that a schedule shouldn't be all about planning your responsibilities. On the contrary, if we don't plan for breaks, vacations, and leisure time in general, we can find ourselves overseeing those, equally important aspects of life.

In 2015, the National Plan for Vacation Day was introduced in the US

Taking a vacation is just like planning your daily breaks — but on a larger scale.

The latest survey results published on the US government website indicate that 63% of Americans feel they desperately need a vacation.

Despite 93% reporting it's important to use their paid time off to travel, most don't get to do it.

The situation was so bad that the government decided to introduce an encouragement policy — National Plan for Vacation Day , which is celebrated in the US on the last Tuesday of January. Thousands of organizations nationwide use the day to inspire their employees for future getaways.

But, why did the government want to encourage Americans to take their time off regularly?

Because the fact is affecting more than just one's mental health — we're talking about the economy.

According to the same source, if people planned a vacation in advance and actually went, this would create an opportunity for up to 2 million additional jobs in various industries.

The vast majority would be jobs in the travel and hospitality industry, naturally.

However, it doesn't stop there, as tourism's contribution is much greater and reaches various other sectors, such as:

• Automotive,
• Construction,
• Manufacturing, and

The total loss from missing opportunities and travel spend was estimated at $151.5 billion.

Government in Japan launched an initiative due to the long working hours

One of the main aspects of being a good time manager is creating a balance between your work and your personal life.

However, in some cultures, workaholism is embraced as a positive thing, appreciated, and even encouraged. That's certainly been the case with Japan. For years, Japan kept the record as the country with the longest working hours .

The peak happened in 2012 with 147.1 hours per month, on average. It has been decreasing since and in 2020 reached its record low of 135.1 hours .

In 2016, a government survey revealed almost 25% of Japanese employees worked a whopping 80 hours of overtime per month. Also, workers in Japan, on average, didn't take 10 of their vacation days — and 63% of those who did felt guilty .

Not having enough time for rest and leisure results in a major deterioration of one's mental health. One of the most extreme cases shocked the whole world in 2015. An employee who had been working 100 hours of overtime per month took her life after struggling with severe depression caused by overwork.

The Japanese government later introduced an additional public holiday and started the Premium Friday initiative, the goal of which is for employees to leave work early on the day.

Bonus: Time Management FAQ

" Own time, or time will own you ." — Brian Norgard

Let's check out the most common issues related to understanding the importance of time management by looking into 6 frequently asked questions that could help you get the big picture.

Is time management a life skill?

In short, yes.

But the topic is much more complex as time management is not really a single, but an array of various skills related to:

• Organization, and
• Execution of tasks.

Many people start managing their time in school in order to boost their productivity and efficiency in completing their academic tasks. And for the vast majority, it's to prepare for further work responsibilities.

However, not too many understand it's crucial to apply the same strategies and prioritize tasks in your personal life as well.

What are 3 reasons why time management is important?

The way we choose to allocate our time during the day is what shapes our personalities. Even the seemingly insignificant habits develop into routines and, eventually, the way of life.

There's an abundance of reasons why taking control of your time matters for every aspect of your lives, and here are the 3 main ones:

• Better work-life balance,
• Greater focus, and
• Higher levels of productivity.

What is the effectiveness of time management?

Effective time management refers to a unique skill set and thus differs for every individual.

In plain words, it means to work smarter, not harder .

Various tasks in our daily routine are mentally exhausting, while others wear us off physically.

To be effective is to plan the order of those tasks in a way to be fully focused while doing them. We already know that the average person spends approximately one-third of their life sleeping , so it's about leveraging every moment we're awake to its full potential.

What are the benefits of time management?

First, there's a direct correlation between time management and mental health — as being in charge of your own schedule boosts your confidence and self-image .

Showing up on time, meeting deadlines, and feeling focused and productive while at work further make other people respect you more .

So, as far as it goes for the benefits of time management, statistics point to a natural consequence — stress and anxiety levels being significantly reduced .

That way, time passes more smoothly, and your life starts operating like a well-oiled machine. The main result is thus a great work-life balance that we all strive for.

What is the best way to manage your time?

There are many proven techniques and strategies to improve your time management skills. However, due to the complexity of the concept and the diversity of our capabilities, there is no "one size fits all" approach.

The only constant rule is to monitor your performance and track your progress.

According to Harvard Business Review , to manage your time better, there are 3 main categories of skills to develop:

• Arrangement, and
• Adaptation.

Bear in mind that it's perfectly fine to experiment a bit until you find what works for you. Especially because, as technology advances, many digital solutions are available to help you do so.

From automation of various tasks and regular reminders to productivity tracking and reporting, these are just some of the features which will enhance your efforts.

How do you master time management?

According to Gladwell's theory , it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a complex skill. However, it's difficult to talk about time management in that context, as the starting point is different for everyone.

But no worries, we can still point you in the right direction.

In gist, mastering time management means 3 things:

• Taking responsibility,
• Developing positive habits, and
• Being determined to improve.

The pace of our life changes as we mature, as well as the surrounding circumstances. It all comes down to our ability to adapt and, ultimately, learn to truly value the limited resource of time.

Scheduling for breaks or creativity may sound strange at first, but it will help you build momentum. Furthermore, there's a reason all of the most successful people do so.

Effective time management statistics reveal there are 5 vital habits that such people share, according to Forbes :

• Learning how to multitask in a productive way,
• Using the technology to shorten the in-person meetings time,
• Creating a routine,
• Writing everything down, and
• Scheduling periods for creativity.

Wrapping it up: Time management is all about getting things done

To sum up, we all need to embrace the fact that time is a limited resource.

So, being a good time manager actually means:

• Using all the resources available,
• Learning to set and achieve goals, and
• Becoming the best version of ourselves.

The time management statistics above reveal that many people struggle just because they lack the right approach or the right tools.

Just remember, Rome wasn't built in a day, so it's all about progress and one step at a time approach.

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Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study Related to Results of TIMSS

[el tiempo dedicado a la tarea y al rendimiento académico: un estudio metaanalítico relacionado con los resultados de timss], gulnar ozyildirim akdeniz university, konyaalti, antalya, turkey, https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2021a30.

Received 31 August 2020, Accepted 24 May 2021

Homework is a common instructional technique that requires extra time, energy, and effort apart from school time. Is homework worth these investments? The study aimed to investigate whether the amount of time spent on homework had any effect on academic achievement and to determine moderators in the relationship between these two terms by using TIMSS data through the meta-analysis method. In this meta-analysis study, data obtained from 488 independent findings from 74 countries in the seven surveys of TIMSS and a sample of 429,970 students was included. The coefficient of standardized means, based on the random effect model, was used to measure the mean effect size and the Q statistic was used to determine the significance of moderator variables. This study revealed that the students spending their time on homework at medium level had effect on their academic achievement and there were some significant moderators in this relationship.

La tarea es una técnica instructiva común que requiere tiempo extra, energía y esfuerzo aparte del horario escolar. ¿Vale la pena hacer estas inversiones? El objetivo del estudio era investigar si el tiempo dedicado a la tarea tenía algún efecto en el rendimiento académico y determinar los moderadores de la relación entre estos dos términos mediante el uso de datos TIMSS a través del método de metaanálisis. En este estudio de metaanálisis se incluyeron los datos obtenidos de 488 hallazgos independientes de 74 países en las siete encuestas de TIMSS y una muestra de 429,970 estudiantes. Se utilizó el coeficiente de medias estandarizadas, basado en el modelo de efecto aleatorio, para medir el tamaño medio del efecto y el estadístico Q para determinar la significación de las variables moderadoras. El estudio reveló el hecho de que los estudiantes que dedican su tiempo a la tarea en el nivel medio tiene efecto en su rendimiento académico y hubo algunos moderadores significativos de esta relación.

Palabras clave

Cite this article as: Ozyildirim, G. (2022). Time Spent on Homework and Academic Achievement: A Meta-analysis Study Related to Results of TIMSS. Psicología Educativa, 28 (1) , 13 - 21. https://doi.org/10.5093/psed2021a30

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• ¿Cuáles son sus derechos cuando nos facilita sus datos? Tienes derecho a obtener confirmación sobre si en el Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos estamos tratando datos personales que les conciernan, o no. Las personas interesadas tienen derecho al acceso a los datos personales que nos haya facilitado, así como a solicitar su rectificación de los datos inexactos o, en su caso, solicitar su supresión cuando, entre otros motivos, los datos ya no sean necesarios para los fines recogidos. En determinadas circunstancias, los interesados podrán solicitar la limitación del tratamiento de sus datos, en dicho caso sólo se conservaran los datos para el ejercicio o la defensa de reclamaciones, así mismo tienen derecho a solicitar la portabilidad de sus datos. En determinadas circunstancias y por motivos relacionados con su situación particular, los interesados pueden oponerse al tratamiento de sus datos, en ese caso el Colegio dejará de tratar sus datos, salvo por motivos legítimos imperiosos o el ejercicio o la defensa de posibles reclamaciones. Puede hacerlo enviando una comunicación al correo electrónico [email protected] enviando solicitud junto con una fotocopia y/o copia escaneada del DNI del solicitante o mediante solicitud escrita y firmada dirigida al Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos, Cuesta San Vicente nº 4 6ª 28008 Madrid, (Protección de Datos), debiendo adjuntar fotocopia del DNI. Asimismo, te informamos que puedes presentar una reclamación ante la Agencia Española de Protección de datos si consideras que tras solicitarnos el ejercicio de alguno de esto derechos no estás de acuerdo con la forma de satisfacerlos https://www.agpd.es/ . Todo lo cual se informa en cumplimiento de la legislación orgánica vigente de Protección de Datos de Carácter Personal y del Reglamento General de Protección de Datos (RGPD).

Should Kids Get Homework?

Homework gives elementary students a way to practice concepts, but too much can be harmful, experts say.

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Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful.

How much homework students should get has long been a source of debate among parents and educators. In recent years, some districts have even implemented no-homework policies, as students juggle sports, music and other activities after school.

Parents of elementary school students, in particular, have argued that after-school hours should be spent with family or playing outside rather than completing assignments. And there is little research to show that homework improves academic achievement for elementary students.

But some experts say there's value in homework, even for younger students. When done well, it can help students practice core concepts and develop study habits and time management skills. The key to effective homework, they say, is keeping assignments related to classroom learning, and tailoring the amount by age: Many experts suggest no homework for kindergartners, and little to none in first and second grade.

Value of Homework

Homework provides a chance to solidify what is being taught in the classroom that day, week or unit. Practice matters, says Janine Bempechat, clinical professor at Boston University 's Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.

"There really is no other domain of human ability where anybody would say you don't need to practice," she adds. "We have children practicing piano and we have children going to sports practice several days a week after school. You name the domain of ability and practice is in there."

Homework is also the place where schools and families most frequently intersect.

"The children are bringing things from the school into the home," says Paula S. Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California—Berkeley and the author of "The End of American Childhood." "Before the pandemic, (homework) was the only real sense that parents had to what was going on in schools."

Harris Cooper, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of "The Battle Over Homework," examined more than 60 research studies on homework between 1987 and 2003 and found that — when designed properly — homework can lead to greater student success. Too much, however, is harmful. And homework has a greater positive effect on students in secondary school (grades 7-12) than those in elementary.

"Every child should be doing homework, but the amount and type that they're doing should be appropriate for their developmental level," he says. "For teachers, it's a balancing act. Doing away with homework completely is not in the best interest of children and families. But overburdening families with homework is also not in the child's or a family's best interest."

Negative Homework Assignments

Not all homework for elementary students involves completing a worksheet. Assignments can be fun, says Cooper, like having students visit educational locations, keep statistics on their favorite sports teams, read for pleasure or even help their parents grocery shop. The point is to show students that activities done outside of school can relate to subjects learned in the classroom.

But assignments that are just busy work, that force students to learn new concepts at home, or that are overly time-consuming can be counterproductive, experts say.

Homework that's just busy work.

Effective homework reinforces math, reading, writing or spelling skills, but in a way that's meaningful, experts say. Assignments that look more like busy work – projects or worksheets that don't require teacher feedback and aren't related to topics learned in the classroom – can be frustrating for students and create burdens for families.

"The mental health piece has definitely played a role here over the last couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing we want to do is frustrate students with busy work or homework that makes no sense," says Dave Steckler, principal of Red Trail Elementary School in Mandan, North Dakota.

Homework on material that kids haven't learned yet.

With the pressure to cover all topics on standardized tests and limited time during the school day, some teachers assign homework that has not yet been taught in the classroom.

Not only does this create stress, but it also causes equity challenges. Some parents speak languages other than English or work several jobs, and they aren't able to help teach their children new concepts.

" It just becomes agony for both parents and the kids to get through this worksheet, and the goal becomes getting to the bottom of (the) worksheet with answers filled in without any understanding of what any of it matters for," says professor Susan R. Goldman, co-director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois—Chicago .

Homework that's overly time-consuming.

The standard homework guideline recommended by the National Parent Teacher Association and the National Education Association is the "10-minute rule" – 10 minutes of nightly homework per grade level. A fourth grader, for instance, would receive a total of 40 minutes of homework per night.

But this does not always happen, especially since not every student learns the same. A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Family Therapy found that primary school children actually received three times the recommended amount of homework — and that family stress increased along with the homework load.

Young children can only remain attentive for short periods, so large amounts of homework, especially lengthy projects, can negatively affect students' views on school. Some individual long-term projects – like having to build a replica city, for example – typically become an assignment for parents rather than students, Fass says.

"It's one thing to assign a project like that in which several kids are working on it together," she adds. "In (that) case, the kids do normally work on it. It's another to send it home to the families, where it becomes a burden and doesn't really accomplish very much."

Private vs. Public Schools

Do private schools assign more homework than public schools? There's little research on the issue, but experts say private school parents may be more accepting of homework, seeing it as a sign of academic rigor.

Of course, not all private schools are the same – some focus on college preparation and traditional academics, while others stress alternative approaches to education.

"I think in the academically oriented private schools, there's more support for homework from parents," says Gerald K. LeTendre, chair of educational administration at Pennsylvania State University—University Park . "I don't know if there's any research to show there's more homework, but it's less of a contentious issue."

How to Address Homework Overload

First, assess if the workload takes as long as it appears. Sometimes children may start working on a homework assignment, wander away and come back later, Cooper says.

"Parents don't see it, but they know that their child has started doing their homework four hours ago and still not done it," he adds. "They don't see that there are those four hours where their child was doing lots of other things. So the homework assignment itself actually is not four hours long. It's the way the child is approaching it."

But if homework is becoming stressful or workload is excessive, experts suggest parents first approach the teacher, followed by a school administrator.

"Many times, we can solve a lot of issues by having conversations," Steckler says, including by "sitting down, talking about the amount of homework, and what's appropriate and not appropriate."

Study Tips for High School Students

Tags: K-12 education , students , elementary school , children

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Time Management Statistics (New Research in 2022)

New time management statistics in 2022, 30-second overview:.

We asked 300 employees across a wide range of industries in the United States and the United Kingdom to uncover new time management statistics in 2022. To achieve this we asked:

• How many people use a time management system at work
• What time management systems people use
• How often they feel they have things under control at work
• How much time is spent in a day looking at email and working on unimportant tasks
• What people feel are the benefits of better time management
• What the maximum amount of time people would be prepared to spend to gain the benefits of better time management

Key Takeaways Of This Study:

• 1 in 8 people (12%) use a dedicated time management system
• 88% of people don’t use a proper system, but make do with a calendar, their email inbox, a to-do list or work it out as they go along
• Time blocking is the most common time management system use (5%), followed by the Rapid Planning Method (3%) and the Eisenhower Matrix at 2%
• 44% of people feel they have things under control at work 5 days a week, but 46% feel they don’t have things under control for one to two days a week, 11% feel they don’t have control for three or more days
• We asked people what they thought of 9 specific benefits of time management: 91% agreed that better time management would reduce stress at work, 90% agreed it would increase productivity, 86% that it would improve focus on tasks, 82% agreed it would give more confidence a work, 74% that it would result in better workplace relationships
• 32% of people say they are constantly looking at email, 31% say they look at email whenever they see a notification and a further 20% say they are looking at least every hour
• 38% of people say they spend up to an hour a day on tasks or meetings that aren’t important to their role, 32% say they waste 1-2 hours and a further 17% waste 2-3 hours
• 76% of people said they would be prepared to spend between 15-30 minutes a day if better time management saved them 90 minutes, reduced stress and improved their reputation at work

Lets take a look at what we asked and more details of the new time management statistics we found:

How do you manage your time at work?

• 12% of people have a dedicated time management system
• 88% do not have a dedicated time management system
• 38% use a to-do list to manage their time
• 23% use their calendar
• 14% do what they feel is most important
• 13% use their email inbox
• 5% use Time Blocking – where you break your day into time blocks and assign a task to each block
• 3% of people use the Rapid Planning Method – where you define the outcome you want to achieve, why you want to do it and what you need to do to achieve it to help you keep focus on that task
• 2% use the Eisenhower Matrix – categorize tasks into one of 4 types – important and urgent items you do straight away, important but not urgent you schedule to do later, the un important items you delegate or delete
• 1% use the Pomodoro technique – where you choose a task you need to get done, set a timer for how long it should take to do, focus on that task until the timer goes off, then take a short break and re-evaluate.

Key Takeaways On How People Manage Their Time:

• The to-do list is the most common time management technique people use. It is one of the simplest yet most effective time management techniques as you prioritize tasks, so they become manageable. It is often overlooked as a time management technique (as people did in this study)
• The next three highest methods are also a form of to do list. Scheduling everything in a calendar creates a to-do list of tasks in date order, it also uses techniques in Time Blocking (blocking time in a calendar) and the Eisenhower technique (scheduling important tasks in a calendar)
• People who are doing whatever feels most important are using the top row of the Eisenhower technique, the important row
• Using the email inbox is yet another form of to-do list
• 88% use some form of to-do list (38% that say they use a to-do list + 23% schedule in their calendar + 14% that do what is most important +13% that use their inbox)
• 77% use part or all of the Eisenhower matrix (38% use a to-do list + 23% schedule things in their calendar + 14% that do what is most important + 2% that use the full 4 quadrant matrix)
• 27% fully or partially use time blocking methods (23% that schedule in their calendar + 5% that use time blocking)

How well do people manage their time at work?

We wanted to know how well people manage their work tasks. To gauge this we asked “how often do you feel you have things under control at work?”.

• 56% of people say they do not have things under control at work every day
• 23% say the having things under control 4 days a week
• 23% say they have things under control just 3 days a week
• 10% say they only have things under control up to 2 days a week

What do you feel are the benefits of time management?

We wanted to understand what people felt were the main benefits of time management. To achieve this, compiled a list of nine unique benefits, then asked people whether they strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, disagree or strongly disagree that these are benefits of time management. In the summary below we’ve provided the percentage values of those that either agree or strongly agree that these are benefits:

• 91% say better time management will lead to reduced stress at work
• 90% say better time management will lead to increased productivity (You may also be interested in our recent research on employee productivity )
• 86% say it will lead to improved focus on tasks
• 83% say it will lead to better decision making
• 84% say it will help in reaching goals faster
• 82% say it will give people more confidence at work
• 76% say it will bring a better reputation at work
• 75% say it will lead to better workplace relationships
• 73% say better time management will lead to more free time

How often do you look at your email in a day?

To many, email is the main communication system at work, but to many email can be a distraction. We found that:

• 1 in 3 people live in their email system (32%), keeping it open and accessible continually through the day
• 1 in 3 people (31%) use notifications to look at emails the instant they come in
• 5% say they look at their email at least every 10 minutes
• 1 in 4 (24%) say they look at their email at least every hour

TIP: Email notifications can be distracting, take you off task and waste time. Turn notifications off and plan your tasks in order of importance or urgency or both. Schedule reminders for work that can be done later, and try to stay focused on each task until complete or for a set minimum amount of time and then take a break. Look at emails in your break.

How much time do you spend per day on tasks that aren’t important?

For the people that weren’t using time management, we wanted to find out how much time they waste in a day on tasks that are not important to their role at work.

• 38% waste less than an hour a day
• 32% waste 1-2 hours a day
• 17% waste 2-3 hours a day
• 7% waste 3-4 hours a day
• 6% waste 4-6 hours a day

Having asked people to think about how they currently manage their time, how much time they spend on unimportant tasks and the benefits better time management provides, we wanted to see how much time they would be prepared to spend every day to improve their time management. We asked the following question:

TIP: Upgrade to Windows 11. The new taskbar has a bar under your open app icons that turns pale red when there are new items. This is great for Outlook and Teams as you can work without notifications, but with a quick glance to the bottom of your screen you can see if there is anything new to deal with without having to flip over to that app.

If better time management saved you 90 minutes a day, reduced stress, and improved your reputation at work, what is the maximum time you would spend per day for that gain?

• 4% said they would spend a maximum of 5 minutes
• 15% said they would spend a maximum of 10 minutes
• 27% said they would spend a maximum of 15 minutes
• 21% said they would spend a maximum of 20 minutes
• 28% said they would spend a maximum of 30 minutes
• 67% of people say they would spend 15-30 minutes a day to gain the benefits of better time management

Time Management Research Details

Timewatch carried out this research in late June 2022 with Pollfish. 300 people were surveyed in the US and UK. The poll was split as follows:

• Male 53%, Female 47%
• 11% 18-24 years of age
• 39% 25-34 years of age
• 34% 35-44 years of age
• 10% 45-54 years of age
• 6% > 54 years of age

Some Surprises In Time Management In Business

Ignoring the people that already have a dedicated time management system, 74% of us use some form of time management system (a calendar (23%), to-do list (38%), inbox (13%)), but don’t recognize it as a time management technique.

• Although only 5% of people say they use time blocking, a further 23% are using time blocking techniques, scheduling things in their calendar
• Although just 2% say they use the Eisenhower Matrix, a further 78% are actually using some elements of the system, giving the possibility that they could improve their time management
• 56% of people say they do not have things under control at work 5 days a week
• on average people waste 100 minutes on unimportant tasks each day
• more than 63% of people are distracted at work by emails
• 89% agree that better time management will increase their productivity at work

People do recognize the benefits of better time management though and say they would be prepared to make the effort to better manage their time:

• on average 82% of people agree or strongly agree the benefits we listed would be gained through better time management
• 76% say they are prepared to invest between 15 and 30 minutes a day to gain the benefits of better time management

How Can Timewatch Help?

If you are interested in better time management and saving time for your employees, there are a few ways Timewatch can help.

• We will soon be releasing an article explaining how people can better utilize their Outlook or Google system for time management using the Eisenhower technique.
• We are investigating creating a tool that would make it incredibly easy for anyone that uses Outlook or Google calendars, uses to-do lists or their inbox for time management to use the full blown Eisenhower Matrix within their calendar. If you are interested in this, we’d love to hear from you.
• As our timesheet systems integrate with Outlook and Google , we today help any organization that uses these tools turn people’s Outlook and Google calendars into timesheets, which typically saves people 1-2 hours a week compared to other timesheet and time tracking systems.

Want to Learn More?

Want to learn more about these time management statistics? Contact us or complete the form to arrange a call with a Timewatch specialist.

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Homework: Helping Students Manage their Time

Two simple strategies for guiding students to improve a crucial skill.

This is the second of two parts. Part one can be found here: Is Homework Helpful?: The 5 Questions Every Teacher Should Ask .

Teachers assign work each and every day, either in class or for homework. That is the easy part. Put it on the board, tell students to copy it down, and move on to the next item on the day’s agenda. But why don’t teachers help students figure out how much time to allot to assignments? How do students know if an assignment should take 10 minutes or 40?

It is a blind spot in my own teaching. I never realized until lately that I wasn’t supporting students with time management skills. I wasn’t developing their ability to assess an assignment and correctly evaluate how much time it should take. 

Why is this important? With good time management, students know how much time they have, how long it will take to get assignments done, and what they can accomplish in the time they have. This gives them more breathing room, which reduces the feeling of being rushed, which in turn leads to less frustration and stress.

Here are two ways to support students in understanding time management.

Do the assignment yourself.  See how long it takes you to complete the work. Then remember, you are the expert with this material. Ask yourself, how long would it take for a proficient student to complete it? What about students with disabilities, what might hinder their progress? Then provide students with a range of times. If you believe an assignment should take 15-25 minutes, let them know. The benefit of this is that it allows students to plan better. They can situate homework in the context of their entire day. A student may get home from school at 3:30 and has soccer practice at 5pm. He now knows that he can complete your homework in any 25-minute window between the end of the school day and the start of practice. The downside to this is that some students may lose confidence and doubt themselves if an assignment takes much longer than you suggested. 

Rate the assignment.  Classify assignments into three categories with time frames for each so that students know what type it is and how long it should take to complete. Here are three ways that I categorize assignments:

Quick checks:  These assignments are measuring sticks of understanding and they are short and sweet. I expect students to spend 20-50 seconds on each question on these types of assignments. A 20-question quick check should take 6-10 minutes.  

Thorough Responses:  When you want answer with more substance and more development, I look for thorough responses. These types of assignments are different than quick checks because I expect students to spend 2-4 minutes per question. Thorough responses typically have fewer questions consequently.Thorough response assignments take my students 20-35 minutes.

Sustained Thought:  When students must access new material, when there is challenging reading, or when they must chew on ideas before they formulate responses,  students can expect to spend 30-40 minutes to complete an assignment. 

This piece was originally submitted to our community forums by a reader. Due to audience interest, we’ve preserved it. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own.

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Effects of homework creativity on academic achievement and creativity disposition: Evidence from comparisons with homework time and completion based on two independent Chinese samples

Huiyong fan.

1 College of Educational Science, Bohai University, Jinzhou, China

2 Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China

Jianzhong Xu

3 Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Foundations, College of Education, Mississippi State University, MS, United States

Shengli Guo

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The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

During the past several decades, the previous studies have been focusing on the related theoretical issues and measuring tool of homework behaviors (mainly including homework time, completion, and homework creativity). However, the effects of these homework behaviors on general creativity remain unknown. Employing a number of questionnaires, this study investigated two samples from middle schools of Mainland China. The results showed that (1) the eight-item version of Homework Creativity Behaviors Scale had acceptable validity and reliability; (2) compared with homework completion and homework time, homework creativity explained less variety of academic achievement (3.7% for homework creativity; 5.4% for completion and time); (3) homework creativity explained more variance of general creativity than that of homework completion and homework time accounted (7.0% for homework creativity; 1.3% for completion and time); and (4) homework creativity was negatively associated with grade level. Contrary to the popular beliefs, homework completion and homework creativity have positive effects on the students’ general creativity. Several issues that need further studies were also discussed.

Introduction

Homework is an important part of the learning and instruction process. Each week, students around the world spend 3–14 hours on homework, with an average of 5 hours a week ( Dettmers et al., 2009 ; OECD, 2014 ). The results of the previous studies and meta-analysis showed that the homework time is correlated significantly with students’ gains on the academic tests ( Cooper et al., 2012 ; Fan et al., 2017 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2019 ).

Homework is a multi-faceted process which has many attributes – each attribute can be identified, defined, and measured independently ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). Some attributes, such as homework time ( Núñez et al., 2013 ; Kalenkoski and Pabilonia, 2017 ), homework frequency ( Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), homework completion ( Rosário et al., 2015 ), homework effort ( Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), homework purpose ( Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2009 ; Xu, 2010 , 2021 ), homework performance and problems ( Power et al., 2007 ), homework management behavior ( Xu, 2008 ), homework expectation ( Xu, 2017 ), and self-regulation of homework behavior ( Yang and Tu, 2020 ), have been well recorded in the literature, and operationally defined and measured.

Recently, a research community has noticed the “creativity” in homework (in short form, “homework creativity”) who have raised some speculations about its effects on students’ academic achievement and general creativity disposition ( Kaiipob, 1951 ; Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ; Guo, 2018 ; Guo and Fan, 2018 ; Chang, 2019 ). However, the scientific measurement of homework creativity has not been examined systematically. The relationship between homework creativity, academic achievement, and general creativity disposition, as well as the grade difference in homework creativity, are still in the state of conjectures consequently.

As a scientific probe to homework creativity, this study included three main sections. In the “Literature Review” section, the conceptualization and relevant measurement of homework creativity were summarized; the relationship between homework behaviors and academic achievements, general creativity, and the grade difference in homework behaviors and general creativity were also evaluated. These four main results related to the four research questions were also presented in the body of this article. They are reliability and validity of homework creativity behavior scale (HCBS), the relationships between the scores of HCBS and those of general creativity and academic achievement, and the grade effects of scores of HCBS. In the “Discussion” section, the scientific contributions and interpretations of the findings of this study were elaborated.

Homework creativity

Conceptual background of homework creativity.

As an attribute of homework process, homework creativity refers to the novelty and uniqueness of homework ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). Specifically, the ways relating to homework creativity with extant theoretical literature are presented below.

First, creativity is a natural part of homework process which serves as a sub-process of learning. Guilford (1950) is the first psychologist who linked creativity with learning, pointing out that the acquisition of creativity is a typical quality of human learning, and that a complete learning theory must take creativity into account.

Second, according to the Four-C Model of Creativity (e.g., Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ), the homework creativity can be divided mainly into the category of “Transformative Learning” (Mini-C creativity), which is different from the “Everyday Innovation” (Little-C creativity), “Professional Expertise” (Pro-C creativity), or “Eminent Accomplishments” (Big-C creativity, Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ; Kozbelt et al., 2011 ).

The Mini-C is defined as a type of intrapersonal creativity which has personal meaning, not solid contribution or breakthrough in a field ( Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 , p. 76, Table 1 ). The most important point which distinguishes Mini-C from other types of creativity is the level of novelty of product. The Mini-C creativity involves the personal insight or interpretation which is new to a particular individual, but may be ordinary to others. The Little-C creativity refers to any small, but solid innovation in daily life. The Pro-C creativity is represented in the form of professional contribution which is still not a breakthrough. The Big-C creativity generates a real breakthrough appears in some field which is considered as something new to all human beings. The other difference is related with the subjects of sub-types of creativity. The Mini-C creativity mainly happens in all kinds of students. The Little-C creativity can be widely found in normal people. The Pro-C creativity’s masters are those who are proficient in some field. The Big-C creativity is related frequently with those giants who has made eminent contribution to human being.

Basic information of samples 1 and 2 included.

The Mini-C creativity frequently happens in learning process. When the contribution of the Mini-C creativity grows big enough, it can move into the category of the Little-C creativity, or the Big-C creativity. Most homework creativity is of Mini-C creativity, and of which a small part may grow as the Little-C and Big-C creativities. For example, when students independently find a unique solution to a problem in homework which has scientific meaning, a Little-C or Big-C occurs.

Third, the education researchers have observed homework creativity for many years and been manipulating them in educational practice. Kaiipob (1951) described that homework is a semi-guide learning process in which homework such as composition, report, public speech, difficult and complex exercises, experiments, and making tools and models consumes a lot of time and accelerate the development of students’ creativity disposition (p. 153).

In the recent years, creativity has become a curriculum or instruction goal in many countries (the case of United Kingdom, see Smith and Smith, 2010 ; Chinese case, see Pang and Plucker, 2012 ). Homework is the most important way that accomplish this goal. Considering Chinese in primary and secondary schools in China as an example, the curriculum standards have clearly required homework to cultivate students’ creative spirit, creative thinking, and ability to imagination since the year 2000. The results of Qian’s (2006) investigation revealed that the percent of these creative homework items in each unit fluctuates between 29 and 45%.

Previous instruments of homework behaviors

Those existent instruments measuring homework behavior can be divided into the following two categories: The single-indicator instruments and the multi-dimension instruments ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). The single-indicator instruments employ only one item to measure homework attributes, such as homework time (e.g., Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ), homework frequency (e.g., De Jong et al., 2000 ), homework completion (e.g., Xu et al., 2019 ), and effort (e.g., Liu et al., 2013 ).

The typical multi-dimension instruments include Homework Process Inventory ( Cooper et al., 1998 ), Homework Purpose Scale ( Xu, 2010 ), Homework Performance Questionnaire ( Pendergast et al., 2014 ), Homework Management Scale (HMS; Xu and Corno, 2003 ), Homework Evaluating Scale ( Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), Homework Problem Checklist ( Anesko et al., 1987 ), Science Homework Scale ( Tas et al., 2016 ), Homework Expectancy Value Scale ( Yang and Xu, 2017 ), and Online Homework Distraction Scale ( Xu et al., 2020 ).

Although the previous tools measured some dimensions of homework ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ), there is hardly any tool that can be employed to gauge the homework creativity. Guo and Fan (2018) extracted several attributes (i.e., time, completion, quality, purpose, effort, creativity, sociality, liking) represented in the existent instruments of homework behaviors, and put forth a multi-faceted model of homework behaviors which intuitionally predicts the existence of homework creativity.

Under the guideline of the multi-faceted model ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ), Guo (2018) developed a multi-dimensional homework behavior instrument, which detected the homework creativity as a dimension in the homework behavior of middle school students. A typical item of homework creativity in Guo (2018) is “The way I do my homework is different from others.” The subscale homework creativity reported by Guo (2018) needs to be improved because it has a small number of items with lower reliability.

Following Guo’s (2018) work, Chang (2019) conducted a new investigation focusing on homework creativity behavior. Using an open-ended questionnaire, a total of 30 students from primary, middle, and high schools were invited to answer this question, that is, “What characteristics can be considered as creative in the process of completing the homework?” Here, “creativity” refers to novelty, uniqueness, and high quality. A group of 23 specific behaviors were reported, among which the top 10 are as follows: Learning by analogy, open minded, one question with multiple solutions, unique solution, summarizing the cause of errors, constructing a personal understanding, analyzing knowledge points clearly, classifying homework contents, making more applications, having rich imagination, and a neat handwriting (see Chang, 2019 , Table 4 , p. 14). Based on these results of open-ended questionnaire, Chang (2019) invented a nine-item scale (see Table 1 and Supplementary Table S3 for details) called as the HCBS which has a good reliability coefficient (α = 0.87).

Regression analyses of homework creative behavior on academic achievement and general creativity.

AA, academic achievement; WCAPt, total score of WCAP; TWk, time spent on homework in week days; TWw, time spent on homework in weekend; HCp, homework completion; HCb, homework creativity behavior.

Previous studies on the relationship between homework behaviors and academic achievement

In the literature, homework behaviors is one cluster of variables typically including homework time, homework completion, effort, purpose, frequency, etc. Academic achievement is an outcome of homework which is operationally measured using the scores on the standardized tests, or non-standardized tests (including final examinations, or teachers’ grades, or estimations by participants themselves, those forms were used widely in the literature, see Fan et al., 2017 ). Academic achievement may be affected by a lot of factors inherited in the process of learning (see Hattie, 2009 for an overview of its correlates). The relationship between homework behaviors and academic achievement is one of the most important questions in homework field, because it is related to the effectiveness of homework ( Cooper et al., 2006 , 2012 ; Fan et al., 2017 ).

Most of the previous studies focused on the relationship between homework time and academic achievement. Cooper et al. (2006) synthesized the primary studies published from 1989 to 2003, and found that the correlation between homework time of America students and their academic achievement was about 0.15. Fan et al. (2017) reviewed those individual studies published before June 2015, and reported that the averaged correlation between homework time of international students and their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic achievement was about 0.20. Fernández-Alonso et al. (2017) investigated a representative sample of Spanish students (more than 26,000), and the results of multi-level analysis indicated that the correlation between homework time and academic achievement was negative at student level, but positive at school level ( r = 0.16). Fernández-Alonso et al. (2019) took a survey on a big sample from 16 countries from Latin America, and reported that the relationship between homework time and academic achievement was very weak. Valle et al. (2019) analyzed the homework time, time management, and achievement of 968 Spain students finding that homework time management was positively related to academic achievement. Taken all these together, we will find that the homework has some small significant correlations with academic achievement, the average r = 0.15.

The correlation between homework completion and academic achievement has also been investigated for decades. Based on a review of 11 primary studies, Fan et al. (2017) reported a high correlation of 0.59 between them. Rosário et al. (2015) investigated 638 students, and demonstrated a correlation of 0.22 between amount of homework completed and math test scores. Xu et al. (2019) took a survey using a sample of 1,450 Chinese eighth graders, and found that the correlations between homework completion and the gains in math test scores ranged from 0.25 to 0.28. Dolean and Lervag (2022) employed the Randomized Controlled Trial design, and demonstrated that amount of homework completed has immediate effect on writing competency in which the effect of moderate amount of homework can last for 4 months. Integrating the aforementioned results, we can find that the averaged correlation between homework completion and academic achievement was higher than that between homework time with academic achievement.

Homework effort was also found to be correlated with academic achievement. Fan et al. (2017) reviewed four primary studies and returned that a medium correlation ( r = 0.31) between homework effort and academic achievement. Two recent investigations showed that this relationship is positively and reciprocally related ( r = 0.41–0.42) ( Xu, 2020 ; Xu et al., 2021 ).

The effect of homework purpose was also correlated with the academic achievement. Fan et al. (2017) summarized four existent primary studies and reported an averaged correlation of 0.11 between them. Later, Rosário et al. (2015) found a similar correlation coefficient of these two variables on a sample of 638 students. Xu’s (2018) investigation revealed that the correlation between purpose and academic achievement was about 0.40. Sun et al. (2021) investigated a larger sample ( N = 1,365), and found that the subscales of homework purpose had different correlation patterns with academic achievement (academic purpose is 0.40, self-regulatory purpose is 0.20, and approval-seeking purpose is 0.10).

Considering the case of homework creativity, there is only one study preliminarily investigated its relationship with academic achievement. Guo (2018) investigated a sample of 1,808 middle school students, and reported a significant correlation between homework creativity and academic achievement ( r = 0.34, p < 0.05).

Previous studies on the relationship between homework behaviors and general creativity

General creativity refers to the psychological attributes which can generate novel and valuable products ( Kaufman and Glăveanu, 2019 ; Sternberg and Karami, 2022 ). These psychological attributes typically included attitude (e.g., willing to take appropriate risk), motivations (e.g., intrinsic motivation, curiosity), abilities (e.g., divergent thinking), and personality (e.g., independence) ( Kaufman and Glăveanu, 2019 ; Long et al., 2022 ). These attributes can be assessed independently, or in the form of grouping ( Plucker et al., 2019 ; Sternberg, 2019 ). For instance, the divergent thinking was measured independently ( Kaufman et al., 2008 ). Also, the willing to take appropriate risk was measured in tools contain other variables ( Williams, 1979 ). There are many studies examined the relationship between learning and general creativity in the past several decades indicating that the correlation between them was around 0.22 (e.g., Gajda et al., 2017 ; Karwowski et al., 2020 ).

Regarding the relationship between homework behaviors and general creativity, there are few studies which presented some contradictory viewpoints. Kaiipob (1951) posited that homework could accelerate development of students’ general creativity disposition, because the tasks in homework provide opportunities to exercise creativity. Cooper et al. (2012) argued that homework can diminish creativity. Furthermore, Zheng (2013) insisted that homework will reduce curiosity and the ability to challenging – the two core components of creativity. The preliminary results of Chang (2019) indicated that the score of HCBS is significantly correlated with scores of a test of general creativity, Williams’ creativity packet ( r = 0.25–0.33, p < 0.05).

Previous studies on the relationship between homework behaviors and homework creativity

In Guo and Fan’s (2018) theoretical work, homework creativity was combined from two independent words, homework and creativity, which was defined as a new attribute of homework process and was considered as a new member of homework behaviors. Up till now, there are two works providing preliminary probe to the relationship between homework behaviors and homework creativity. Guo (2018) investigated a sample of 1808 middle school students, and found that homework creativity was correlated significantly with liking ( r = 0.33), correctness ( r = 0.47), completion ( r = 0.57), and purpose ( r = 0.53). Based on another sample of Chinese students (elementary school students, N = 300; middle school students, N = 518; high school students, N = 386), Chang (2019) showed that the score of homework creativity was correlated significantly with homework time ( r = 0.11), completion ( r = 0.39), correctness ( r = 0.63), effort ( r = 0.73), social interaction ( r = 0.35), quality ( r = 0.69), interpersonal relation purpose ( r = 0.17), and purpose of personal development ( r = 0.41).

Previous studies on grade differences of homework behaviors and general creativity

Grade differences of homework behaviors.

As a useful indicator, homework time was recorded frequently (e.g., Cooper et al., 2006 ; Fan et al., 2017 ). A recent meta-analysis included 172 primary studies (total N = 144,416) published from 2003 to 2019, and demonstrated that time Chinese K-12 students spent on homework increased significantly along with increasing of grades ( Zhai and Fan, 2021 , October).

Regarding homework managing time, some studies reported the grade difference was insignificant. Xu (2006) surveyed 426 middle school students and found that there was no difference between middle school students and high school students. Xu and Corno (2003) reported that urban junior school students ( N = 86) had no grade difference in homework Managing time. Yang and Tu (2020) surveyed 305 Chinese students in grades 7–9, and found that in managing time behavior, the grade differences were insignificant. The rest studies showed that the grade effect is significant. A survey by Xu et al. (2014) based on 1799 Chinese students in grades 10 and 11 showed that the higher level the grade, the lower level of time management.

Grade differences of general creativity

The findings from the previous studies suggested that the scores of general creativity deceases as the grade increases except for some dimensions. Kim (2011) reviewed the Torrance Tests of Creative thinking (TTCT) scores change using five datasets from 1974 to 2008, and reported that three dimensions of creative thinking (i.e., “Fluency,” “Originality,” and “Elaboration”) significantly decreased along with grades increase, while the rest dimension (i.e., “Abstractness of titles”) significantly increased when grades increase. Nie and Zheng (2005) investigated a sample of 3,729 participants from grades 3–12 using the Williams’ Creativity Assessment Packet (WCAP), and reported that the creativity scores decreased from grades 9–12. Said-Metwaly et al. (2021) synthesized 41 primary studies published in the past 60 years, and concluded that the ability of divergent thinking had a whole increase tendency from grades 1 to 12 with a decrease tendency from grades 8 to 11 at the same time.

The purpose and questions of this study

What we have known about homework creativity hitherto is nothing except for its notation and a preliminary version of measurement. To get deeper understanding of homework creativity, this study made an endeavor to examine its relationships with relevant variables based on a confirmation of the reliability and validity of HCBS. Specifically, there are four interrelated research questions, as the following paragraphs (and their corresponding hypotheses) described.

(i) What is the reliability and validity of the HCBS?

Because the earlier version of the HCBS showed a good Cronbach α coefficient of 0.87, and a set of well-fitting indices ( Chang, 2019 ), this study expected that the reliability and validity will also behave well in the current conditions as before. Then, we present the first set of hypotheses as follows:

H1a: The reliability coefficient will equal or greater than 0.80.

H1b: The one-factor model will also fit the current data well; and all indices will reach or over the criteria as the expertise suggested.

(ii) What degree is the score of the HCBS related with academic achievement?

As suggested by the review section, the correlations between homework behaviors and academic achievement ranged from 0.15 and 0.59 (e.g., Fan et al., 2017 ), then we expected that the relationship between homework creativity and academic achievement will fall into this range, because homework creativity is a member of homework behaviors.

The results of the previous studies also demonstrated that the correlation between general creativity and academic achievement changed in a range of 0.19–0.24 with a mean of 0.19 ( Gajda et al., 2017 ). Because it can be treated as a sub-category of general creativity, we predicted that homework creativity will have a similar behavior under the current condition.

Taken aforementioned information together, Hypothesis H2 is presented as follows:

H2: There will be a significant correlation between homework creativity and academic achievement which might fall into the interval of 0.15–0.59.

(iii) What degree is the relationship between HCBS and general creativity?

As discussed in the previous section, there are no inconsistent findings about the relationship between the score of HCBS and general creativity. Some studies postulated that these two variables be positive correlated (e.g., Kaiipob, 1951 ; Chang, 2019 ); other studies argued that this relationship be negative (e.g., Cooper et al., 2012 ; Zheng, 2013 ). Because homework creativity is a sub-category of general creativity, we expected that this relationship would be positive and its value might be equal or less than 0.33. Based on those reasoning, we presented our third hypothesis as follows:

H3: The correlation between homework creativity and general creativity would be equal or less than 0.33.

(iv) What effect does grade have on the HCBS score?

Concerning the grade effect of homework behaviors, the previous findings were contradictory ( Xu et al., 2014 ; Zhai and Fan, 2021 , October). However, the general creativity decreased as the level of grade increases from grade 8 to grade 11 ( Kim, 2011 ; Said-Metwaly et al., 2021 ). Taken these previous findings and the fact that repetitive exercises increase when grades go up ( Zheng, 2013 ), we were inclined to expect that the level of homework creativity is negative correlated with the level of grade. Thus, we presented our fourth hypothesis as follows:

H4: The score of HCBS might decrease as the level of grades goes up.

Materials and methods

Participants.

To get more robust result, this study investigated two convenient samples from six public schools in a medium-sized city in China. Among them, two schools were of high schools (including a key school and a non-key school), and the rest four schools were middle schools (one is key school, and the rest is non-key school). All these schools included here did not have free lunch system and written homework policy. Considering the students were mainly prepared for entrance examination of higher stage, the grades 9 and 12 were excluded in this survey. Consequently, students of grades 7, 8, 10, and 11 were included in our survey. After getting permission of the education bureau of the city investigated, the headmasters administrated the questions in October 2018 (sample 1) and November 2019 (sample 2).

A total of 850 questionnaires were released and the valid number of questionnaires returned is 639 with a valid return rate of 75.18%. Therefore, there were 639 valid participants in sample 1. Among them, there were 273 boys and 366 girls (57.2%); 149 participants from grade 7 (23.31%), 118 from grade 8 (18.47%), 183 from grade 10 (28.64%), and 189 from grade 11 (29.58%); the average age was 15.25 years, with a standard deviation (SD) of 1.73 years. See Table 1 for the information about each grade.

Those participants included received homework assignments every day (see Table 1 for the distribution of homework frequency). During the working days, the averaged homework time was 128.29 minutes with SD = 6.65 minutes. In the weekend, the average homework time was 3.75 hours, with SD = 0.22 hours. The percentage distribution here is similar with that of a national representative sample ( Sun et al., 2020 ), because the values of Chi-squared (χ 2 ) were 7.46 (father) and 8.46 (mother), all p -values were above 0.12 (see Supplementary Table S1 for details).

Another package of 850 questionnaires were released. The valid number of questionnaires returned is 710 with a valid return rate of 83.53%. Among them, there were 366 girls (51.50%); 171 participants from grade 7 (24.23%), 211 from grade 8 (26.06%), 190 from the grade 10 (22.96%), and 216 from grade 11 (26.76%); the average age was 15.06 years, with SD = 1.47 years.

Those participants included received homework assignments almost each day (see Table 1 for details for the distribution of homework frequency). During the working days, the averaged homework time was 123.02 minutes with SD = 6.13 minutes. In weekend, the average homework time was 3.47 hours, with SD = 0.21 hours.

The percentage distribution here is insignificantly different from that of a national representative sample ( Sun et al., 2020 ), because the values of χ 2 were 5.20 (father) and 6.05 (mother), p -values were above 0.30 (see Supplementary Table S1 for details).

Instruments

The homework creativity behavior scale.

The HCBS contains nine items representing students’ creativity behaviors in the process of completing homework (for example, “I do my homework in an innovative way”) ( Chang, 2019 , see Supplementary Table S3 for details). The HCBS employs a 5-point rating scale, where 1 means “completely disagree” and 5 means “completely agree.” The higher the score, the stronger the homework creative behavior students have. The reliability and validity of the HCBS can be found in Section “Reliability and validity of the homework creativity behavior scale” (see Table 2 and Figures 1 , ​ ,2 2 for details).

Results of item discrimination analysis and exploratory factor analysis.

**p < 0.01, two side-tailed. The same for below.

a Correlations for sample 1; b Correlations for sample 2. c Seventh item should be removed away according to the results of CFA (see section “Reliability and validity of the HCBS” for details).

Parallel analysis scree plots of the HCBS data.

The standardized solution for HCBS eight-item model. hcb, homework creativity behavior; it 1∼9, item1 ∼6, 8∼9.

Homework management scale

The HMS contains 22 items describing specific behaviors related to self-management in homework (for example, “I will choose a quiet place to do my homework” or “Tell myself to calm down when encountering difficulties”) ( Xu and Corno, 2003 ; Xu, 2008 ). The HMS employs a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). All items can be divided into five dimensions, i.e., arranging environment, managing time, focusing attention, monitoring motivation, and monitoring and controlling emotion. Among them, the monitoring and controlling emotion dimension adopts a method of reverse scoring.

Except for the internal consistency of arranging environment in sample 1, which is 0.63, the internal consistency coefficients of the five dimensions based two samples in this study are all greater than 0.7, ranging from 0.70 to 0.79. The Cronbach’s coefficients of the overall HMS-based two samples are 0.88 and 0.87, respectively. The ω coefficients of the dimensions of HMS ranged from 0.64 to 0.80. The ω coefficients of the HMS total scores were 0.88 and 0.87 for samples 1 and 2, respectively. Those reliability coefficients were acceptable for research purpose ( Clark and Watson, 1995 ; Peterson and Kim, 2013 ).

Williams’ creativity assessment packet

The WCAP including a total of 40 items is a revised version to measure general disposition of creativity (for example, “I like to ask some questions out of other’s expectation” or “I like to imagine something novel, even if it looks useless”) ( Williams, 1979 ; Wang and Lin, 1986 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). The WCAP uses a 3-point Likert scales, in which 1 = disagree, 2 = uncertain, and 3 = agree. The higher WCAP score, the higher is the general creativity level. All items of WCAP can be scattered into four dimensions: adventure, curiosity, imagination, and challenge ( Williams, 1979 ; Wang and Lin, 1986 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). In this study, the Cronbach’s α coefficients of adventure, curiosity, imagination, challenge, and total scale are 0.62, 0.71, 0.78, 0.64, and 0.90, respectively. The ω coefficients were in sequence 0.61, 0.70, 0.77, 0.63, and 0.90 for adventure, curiosity, imagination, challenge, and the total score of WCAP. The correlations between the four dimensions of WCAP are between 0.47 and 0.65. The patterns of reliability coefficients and correlations between dimensions are similar to those results reported by the previous studies ( Williams, 1979 ; Wang and Lin, 1986 ; Liu et al., 2016 ) which stand acceptable reliability and validity ( Clark and Watson, 1995 ; Peterson and Kim, 2013 ).

Homework indicators

Homework time.

The participants were asked to report the time spent on homework in the past week. This technique has been employed widely in many international survey programs, such as PISA from OECD (e.g., Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ). The items are as follows: (1) “Every day, from Monday to Friday, in last week, how many minutes you spent on homework?” The options are as follows: (A) 0–30 min; (B) 31–60 min (C) 61–90 min (D) 91–120 min; (E) 121–180 min; (F) 181 min or more. (2) “In last weekend, how many hours you spent on homework?” The options are as follows: (A) 0–1 h; (B) 1.1–3 h; (C) 3.1–5 h; (D) 5.1–7 h; (E) 7.1 h or more.

Homework completion

The homework completion is a useful indicator demonstrated in the previous studies ( Welch et al., 1986 ; Austin, 1988 ; Swank, 1999 ; Pelletier, 2005 ; Wilson, 2010 ), and had large correlation with achievement, as a meta-analytic results suggested ( Fan et al., 2017 ). In the survey of this study, the participants were also asked to estimate a percent of the completion of homework in the past week and fill in the given blank space. It includes three items which are as follows: “What is the percentage of Chinese/Maths/English homework assignment you completed in the last week?” “Please estimate and write a number from 0 to 100 in the blank space.”

Academic achievement

To record the academic achievement, an item required participants to make a choice based on their real scores of tests, not estimate their tests scores. The item is, “In the last examination, what is the rank of your score in your grade?” (A) The first 2%; (B) The first 3–13%; (C) The first 14–50%; (D) The first 51–84%; (E) The last 16%. The options here correspond to the percentage in the normal distribution, it is convenient to compute a Z -score for each student.

The method employed here is effective to retrieve participants’ test scores. First, the self-report method is more effective than other method under the condition of anonymous investigation. To our knowledge, participants do not have the will to provide their real information in the real name format. Second, this method transforms test scores from different sources into the same space of norm distribution which benefits the comparisons. Third, the validity of this method has been supported by empirical data. Using another sample ( N = 234), we got the academic achievement they reported and real test scores their teacher recorded. The correlation between ranks self-reported and the real scores from Chinese test were r = 0.81, p < 0.001; and the correlation coefficient for mathematics was also large, i.e., r = 0.79, p < 0.001.

Data collection procedure

There are three phases in data collection. The first one is the design stage. At this stage, the corresponding author of this study designed the study content, prepared the survey tools, and got the ethical approve of this project authorized from research ethic committee of school the corresponding author belongs to.

The second stage is to releasing questionnaire prepared. The questionnaire was distributed and retrieved by the head master of those classes involved. Neither the teachers nor the students knew the purpose of this research. During this stage, students can stop answering at any time, or simply withdraw from the survey. None of the teachers and students in this study received payment.

The third stage is the data entry stage. At this stage, the corresponding author of this study recruited five volunteers majored in psychology and education, and explained to them the coding rules, missing value processing methods, identification of invalid questionnaires, and illustrated how to deal with these issues. The volunteers used the same data template for data entry. The corresponding author of this study controlled the data entry quality by selective check randomly.

Data analysis strategies

R packages employed.

The “psych” package in R environment ( R Core Team, 2019 ) was employed to do descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, mean difference comparisons, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), reliability Analysis ( Revelle, 2022 ); and the “lavaan” package was used in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and measurement invariance test ( Rosseel, 2012 ); and the “semPlot” package was employed to draw the picture of CFA’s outputs ( Epskamp et al., 2022 ).

Analysis strategies of exploratory factor analysis and reliability

Sample 1 was used for item analysis, EFA, reliability analysis. In EFA, factors were extracted using maximum likelihood, and the promax method served as the rotation method. The number of factors were determined according to the combination of the results from screen plot, and the rule of Eigenvalues exceeding 1.0, and parallel analysis ( Luo et al., 2019 ).

The Cronbach’s α and MacDonald’s ω test were employed to test the reliability of the scale. The rigorous criteria that α ≥ 0.70 ( Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994 ) and ω ≥ 0.7 ( Green and Yang, 2015 ) were taken as acceptable level of the reliability of HCBS.

Analysis strategies of confirmatory factor analysis

As suggested by Hu and Bentler (1999) , two absolute goodness-of-fit indices, namely, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and two relative goodness-of-fit indices, namely, comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) were recruited as fitting indicators. The absolute goodness-of-fit indices are less than 0.08, and the relative goodness-of-fit indices greater than 0.90 are considered as a good fit. The CFA was conducted using the second sample.

Strategies for measurement invariance

Measurement invariance testing included four models, they are Configural invariance (Model 1), which is to test whether the composition of latent variables between different groups is the same; Weak invariance (Factor loading invariance, Model 2), which is to test whether the factor loading is equal among the groups; Intercept invariance (Model 3), that is, whether the intercepts of the observed variables are equal; Strict equivalent (Residual Variance invariance, Model 4), that is, to test whether the error variances between different groups are equal ( Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ).

Since the χ 2 test will be affected easily by the sample size, even small differences will result in significant differences as the sample size will increase. Therefore, this study used the changes of model fitting index CFI, RMSEA, and SRMR (ΔCFI, ΔRMSEA, and ΔSRMR) to evaluate the invariance of the measurement. When ΔCFI ≤ 0.010, ΔRMSEA ≤ 0.015, and ΔSRMR ≤ 0.030 (for metric invariance) or 0.015 (for scalar or residual invariance), the invariance model is considered acceptable ( Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ; Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ).

Strategies of controlling common methods biases

The strategy of controlling common methods biases is mainly hided in the directions. Each part of the printed questionnaire had a sub-direction which invites participants answer the printed questions honestly. The answer formats between any two neighboring parts were different from each other which requested participants change their mind in time. For example, on some part, the answering continuum varied from “1 = totally disagreed” to “5 = total agreed,” while the answering continuum on the neighboring part is the from “5 = totally disagreed” to “1 = total agreed.” Additionally, according to the suggestion of the previous studies, the one factor CFA model and the bi-factor model can be used to detect the common methods biases (e.g., Podsakoff et al., 2012 ).

Detection of common method biases

The fitting results of the one-common-factor model using CFA technique were as follows: χ 2 = 15,073, df = 3320, p < 0.001; χ 2 / df = 4.54, CFI = 0.323, TLI = 0.306, RMSEA = 0.071, 90% CI: 0.070–0.072, and SRMR = 0.101. The results of the bi-factor model under CFA framework were presented as follows: χ 2 = 2,225.826, df = 117, p < 0.001; χ 2 / df = 19.024, CFI = 0.650, TLI = 0.543, RMSEA = 0.159, 90% CI: 0.154–0.164, and SRMR = 0.127. These poor indices of the two models suggested that the one-common-factor model failed to fit the data well and that the biases of common method be ignored ( Podsakoff et al., 2012 ).

Reliability and validity of the homework creativity behavior scale

Item analysis.

Based on the sample 1, the correlation coefficients between the items of the HCBS were between 0.34 and 0.64, p -values were below 0.01. The correlations between the items and the total score of HCBS vary from 0.54 to 0.75 ( p -values are below 0.01). On the condition of sample 2, the correlations between the items fluctuate between 0.31 and 0.58, the correlation coefficients between the items and the total score of the HCBS change from 0.63 to 0.75 ( p -values were below 0.01). All correlation coefficients between items and total score are larger than those between items and reached the criterion suggested ( Ferketich, 1991 ; see Table 2 for details).

Results of exploratory factor analysis

The EFA results (based on sample 1) showed that the KMO was 0.89, and the χ 2 of Bartlett’s test = 1,666.07, p < 0.01. The rules combining eigenvalue larger than 1 and the results of parallel analysis (see Figure 1 for details) suggested that one factor should be extracted. The eigenvalue of the factor extracted was 3.63. The average variance extracted was 0.40. This factor accounts 40% variance with factor loadings fluctuating from 0.40 to 0.76 (see Table 2 ).

Results of confirmatory factor analysis

In the CFA situation (based on sample 2) the fitting indices of the nine-item model of the HCBS are acceptable marginally, they are χ 2 = 266.141; df = 27; χ 2 / df = 9.857; CFI = 0.904; TLI = 0.872; RMSEA = 0.112; 90% CI: 0.100–0.124; SRMR = 0.053.

The modification indices of item 7 were too big (MI value = 74.339, p < 0.01), so it is necessary to consider to delete item 7. Considering its content of “I designed a neat, clean and clear homework format by myself,” item 7 is an indicator of strictness which is weakly linked with creativity. Therefore, the item 7 should be deleted.

After removing item 7, the fitting results were, χ 2 = 106.111; df = 20; χ 2 / df = 5.306; CFI = 0.957; TLI = 0.939; RMSEA = 0.078; 90% CI: 0.064–0.093; SRMR = 0.038). The changes of the fitting indices of the two nested models (eight-item vs. nine-item models) are presented as follows: Δχ 2 = 160.03, Δ df = 7, χ 2 (α = 0.01, df = 7) = 18.48, p < 0.05. After deleting item 7, both CFI and TLI indices increased to above 0.93, and RMSEAs decreased below 0.08 which suggested that the factor model on which eight items loaded fitted the data well. The average variance extracted was 0.50 which is adequate according to the criteria suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981) . The standardized solution for the eight-item model of the HCBS was shown in Figure 2 .

Correlations between the homework creativity behavior scale and similar concepts

The results showed that the score of the HCBS was significantly correlated with the total score and four dimensions of WCAP and their correlation coefficients ranged from 0.20 to 0.29, p -values were below 0.01. Similarly, the correlations between the score of the HCBS and the scores of arranging environment, managing time, motivation management, and controlling emotion, and total score of the HMS ranged from 0.08 to 0.22, p -values were 0.01; at the meanwhile, the correlation between the score of HCBS and the distraction dimension of the HMS was r = –0.14, p -values were 0.01. The HCBS score was also significantly related to homework completion ( r = 0.18, p < 0.01), but insignificantly related to homework time (see Table 3 for details).

Correlation matrix between variables included and the corresponding descriptive statistics.

About correlation between variables, the results of sample 1 and sample 2 were presented in the lower, upper triangle, respectively.

a In analyses, grades 7, 8, 10, and 11 were valued 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

b TWk, the time spent on homework in the weekend; TWw, the time spent on homework from Monday to Friday; HCp, homework completion; HMSt, total score of homework management scale; AE, arrange environment; MT, manage time; MM, monitor motivation; CE, control emotion; FA, focus attention; WCAPt, WCAP total score; AD, adventure; CU, curiosity; IM, imagination; CH, challenging; HCb, homework creativity behavior; AA, academic achievement.

c Since sample 1 did not answer the WCAP, so the corresponding cells in the lower triangle are blank. *p < 0.05, two side-tailed, the same for below.

d Since there is only one item from variable 1 to 4, the α and ω coefficients cannot be computed.

Correlations between the homework creativity behavior scale and distinct concepts

The correlation analysis results demonstrated that both the correlation coefficients between the score of HCBS and the time spent on homework in week days, and time spent on in weekend days were insignificant ( r -values = 0.02, p -values were above 0.05), which indicated a non-overlap between two distinct constructs of homework creativity and time spent on homework.

Reliability analyses

The results revealed that both the Cronbach’s α coefficients of sample 1 and sample 2 were 0.86, which were greater than a 0.70 criteria the previous studies suggest ( Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994 ; Green and Yang, 2015 ).

Effect of homework creativity on academic achievement

The results (see Table 4 ) of hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that (1) gender and grade explained 0.8% variation of the score of academic achievement. This number means closing to zero because the regression equation failed to pass the significance test; (2) homework time and completion explained 5.4% variation of academic achievement; considering the β coefficients of the time spent on homework is insignificant, this contribution should be attributed to homework completion totally, and (3) the score of the HCBS explained 3.7% variation of the academic achievement independently.

Effect of homework creativity on general creativity

The results showed the following (see Table 4 for details):

(1) Gender and grade explained 1.3% variation of the total score of general creativity (i.e., the total score of WACP); homework time and completion explained 1.3% variation of the total score of general creativity disposition; and the score of the HCBS independently explained 7.0% variation of the total score of general creativity.

(2) Gender and grade explained 1.7% variation of the adventure score, and homework time and completion explained 1.6% variation of the adventure score, and the score of the HCBS independently explained 6.4% variation of the adventure score.

(3) Gender and grade explained 2.4% variation of the curiosity score, and homework time and completion explained 1.1% variation of the curiosity score, and the score of the HCBS independently explained 5.1% variation of the curiosity score.

(4) Gender and grade explained 0.3% variation of the imagination score, homework time completion explained 0.3% variation of the imagination score. The real values of the two “0.3%” are zeros because both the regression equations and coefficients failed to pass the significance tests. Then the score of the HCBS independently explained 4.4% variation of the imagination score.

(5) Gender and grade explained 0.3% variation of the score of the challenge dimension, homework time and completion explained 2.3% variation of the challenge score, and the score of the HCBS independently explained 4.9% variation of the challenge score.

Grade differences of the homework creativity behavior scale

Test of measurement invariance.

The results of measurement invariance test across four grades indicated the following:

(1) The fitting states of the four models (Configural invariance, Factor loading invariance, Intercept invariance, and Residual variance invariance) were marginally acceptable, because values of CFIs (ranged from 0.89 to 0.93), TLIs (varied from 0.91 to 0.93), RMSEAs (fluctuated from 0.084 to 0.095), and SRMRs (changed from 0.043 to 0.074) located the cutoff intervals suggested by methodologists ( Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ; Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ; see Table 5 for fitting indices, and refer to Supplementary Table S2 for the estimation of parameters).

Fitting results of invariance tests across grades.

(2) When setting factor loadings equal across four grades (i.e., grades 7, 8, 10, and 11), the ΔCFA was –0.006, ΔRMSEA was –0.007, and ΔSRMR was 0.016 which indicated that it passed the test of factor loading invariance. After adding the limit of intercepts equal across four groups, the ΔCFA was –0.008, ΔRMSEA was –0.004, and the ΔSRMR was 0.005 which supported that it passed the test of intercept invariance. At the last step, the error variances were also added as equal, the ΔCFA was –0.027, ΔRMSEA was 0.005, and the ΔSRMR was 0.019 which failed to pass the test of residual variance invariance (see Table 5 for changes of fitting indices). Taking into these fitting indices into account, the subsequent comparisons between the means of factors can be conducted because the residuals are not part of the latent factor ( Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ; Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ).

Grade differences in homework creativity and general creativity

The results of ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in the HCBS among the four grades [ F (3,1345) = 27.49, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.058, see Table 6 for details]. Further post-test tests returned that the scores of middle school students were significantly higher than those of high school students (Cohen’s d values ranged from 0.46 to 0.54; the averaged Cohen’s d = 0.494), and no significant difference occurs between grades 7 and 8, or between grades 10 and 11. See Figure 3 for details.

Grade differences in HCBS.

***p < 0.001.

The mean differences of the HCBS between the groups of grades.

To address the gap in the previous research on homework creativity, this study examined the psychometric proprieties of the HCBS and its relationship with academic achievement and general creativity. The main findings were (1) Hypotheses H1a and H1b were supported that the reliability and validity of the HCBS were acceptable; (2) Hypothesis H2 was supported that the correlation between the score of the HCBS and academic achievement was significant ( r -values = 0.23–0.26 for two samples); (3) Hypothesis H3 received support that the correlation between the scores of HCBS and WCAP was significant ( r -values = 0.20–0.29 for two samples); and (4) the H4 was supported from the current data that the score of high school students’ was lower than that of the middle school students’ (Cohen’s d = 0.49).

The positive correlations among homework creativity, homework completion, and general creativity

The first key finding should be noted is that the positive correlations with between pairs of homework creativity, homework completion, and general creativity. This result is inconsistent with prediction of an argument that homework diminishes creativity ( Cooper et al., 2012 ; Zheng, 2013 ). Specifically, the correlation between homework completion and curiosity was insignificant ( r = 0.08, p > 0.05) which did not support the argument that homework hurts curiosity of creativity ( Zheng, 2013 ). The possible reason may be homework can provide opportunities to foster some components of creativity by independently finding and developing new ways of understanding what students have learned in class, as Kaiipob (1951) argued. It may be the homework creativity that served as the way to practice the components of general creativity. In fact, the content of items of the HCBS are highly related with creative thinking (refer to Table 2 for details).

Possible reasons of the grade effect of the score of the homework creativity behavior scale

The second key finding should be noted is that the score of the HCBS decreased as the level of grades increased from 7 to 11. This is consistent with the basic trend recorded in the previous meta-analyses ( Kim, 2011 ; Said-Metwaly et al., 2021 ). There are three possible explanations leading to this grade effect. The first one is the repetitive exercises in homework. As Zheng (2013) observed, to get higher scores in the highly competitive entrance examination of high school and college, those Chinese students chose to practice a lot of repetitive exercises. The results of some behavior experiments suggested that repetitive activity could reduce the diverse thinking of subjects’ (e.g., Main et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, the repetitive exercises would lead to fast habituation (can be observed by skin conductance records) which hurts the creative thinking of participants ( Martindale et al., 1996 ). The second explanation is that the stress level in Chinese high schools is higher than in middle school because of the college entrance examination. The previous studies (e.g., Beversdorf, 2018 ) indicated that the high level of stress will trigger the increase activity of the noradrenergic system and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis which could debase the individual’s performance of creativity. Another likely explanation is the degree of the certainty of the college entrance examination. The level of certainty highly increases (success or failure) when time comes closer to the deadline of the entrance examination. The increase of degree of certainty will lead to the decrease of activity of the brain areas related to curiosity (e.g., Jepma et al., 2012 ).

The theoretical implications

From the theoretical perspective, there are two points deserving to be emphasized. First, the findings of this study extended the previous work ( Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ). This study revealed that homework creativity had two typical characteristics, including the personal meaning of students (as represented by the content of items of the HCBS) and the small size of “creativity” and limited in the scope of exercises (small correlations with general creativity). These characteristics are in line with what Mini-C described by the previous studies ( Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ). Second, this study deepened our understanding of the relationship between learning (homework is a part of learning) and creativity which has been discussed more than half a century. One of the main viewpoints is learning and creativity share some fundamental similarities, but no one explained what is the content of these “fundamental similarities” (e.g., Gajda et al., 2017 ). This study identified one similarity between learning and creativity in the context of homework, that is homework creativity. Homework creativity has the characteristics of homework and creativity at the same time which served as an inner factor in which homework promote creativity.

The practical implications

The findings in this study also have several potential practical implications. First, homework creativity should be a valuable goal of learning, because homework creativity may make contributions to academic achievement and general creativity simultaneously. They accounted for a total of 10.7% variance of academic achievement and general creativity which are the main goals of learning. Therefore, it is valuable to imbed homework creativity as a goal of learning, especially in the Chinese society ( Zheng, 2013 ).

Second, the items of the HCBS can be used as a vehicle to help students how to develop about homework creativity. Some studies indicated that the creative performance of students will improve just only under the simple requirement of “to be creative please” ( Niu and Sternberg, 2003 ). Similarly, some simple requirements, like “to do your homework in an innovative way,” “don’t stick to what you learned in class,” “to use a simpler method to do your homework,” “to use your imagination when you do homework,” “to design new problems on the basis what learnt,” “to find your own unique insights into your homework,” and “to find multiple solutions to the problem,” which rewritten from the items of the HCBS, can be used in the process of directing homework of students. In fact, these directions are typical behaviors of creative teaching (e.g., Soh, 2000 ); therefore, they are highly possible to be effective.

Third, the HCBS can be used to measure the degree of homework creativity in ordinary teaching or experimental situations. As demonstrated in the previous sections, the reliability and validity of the HCBS were good enough to play such a role. Based on this tool, the educators can collect the data of homework creativity, and make scientific decisions to improve the performance of people’s teaching or learning.

Strengths, limitations, and issues for further investigation

The main contribution is that this study accumulated some empirical knowledge about the relationship among homework creativity, homework completion, academic achievement, and general creativity, as well as the psychometric quality of the HCBS. However, the findings of this study should be treated with cautions because of the following limitations. First, our study did not collect the test–retest reliability of the HCBS. This makes it difficult for us to judge the HCBS’s stability over time. Second, the academic achievement data in our study were recorded by self-reported methods, and the objectivity may be more accurate. Third, the lower reliability coefficients existed in two dimensions employed, i.e., the arrange environment of the HMS (the α coefficient was 0.63), and the adventure of the WCAP (the α coefficient was 0.61). Fourth, the samples included here was not representative enough if we plan to generalize the finding to the population of middle and high school students in main land of China.

In addition to those questions listed as laminations, there are a number of issues deserve further examinations. (1) Can these findings from this study be generalized into other samples, especially into those from other cultures? For instances, can the reliability and validity of the HCBS be supported by the data from other samples? Or can the grade effect of the score of the HCBS be observed in other societies? Or can the correlation pattern among homework creativity, homework completion, and academic achievement be reproduced in other samples? (2) What is the role of homework creativity in the development of general creativity? Through longitudinal study, we can systematically observe the effect of homework creativity on individual’s general creativity, including creative skills, knowledge, and motivation. The micro-generating method ( Kupers et al., 2018 ) may be used to reveal how the homework creativity occurs in the learning process. (3) What factors affect homework creativity? Specifically, what effects do the individual factors (e.g., gender) and environmental factors (such as teaching styles of teachers) play in the development of homework creativity? (4) What training programs can be designed to improve homework creativity? What should these programs content? How about their effect on the development of homework creativity? What should the teachers do, if they want to promote creativity in their work situation? All those questions call for further explorations.

Homework is a complex thing which might have many aspects. Among them, homework creativity was the latest one being named ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). Based on the testing of its reliability and validity, this study explored the relationships between homework creativity and academic achievement and general creativity, and its variation among different grade levels. The main findings of this study were (1) the eight-item version of the HCBS has good validity and reliability which can be employed in the further studies; (2) homework creativity had positive correlations with academic achievement and general creativity; (3) compared with homework completion, homework creativity made greater contribution to general creativity, but less to academic achievement; and (4) the score of homework creativity of high school students was lower than that of middle school students. Given that this is the first investigation, to our knowledge, that has systematically tapped into homework creativity, there is a critical need to pursue this line of investigation further.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the research ethic committee, School of Educational Science, Bohai University. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author contributions

HF designed the research, collected the data, and interpreted the results. YM and SG analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. HF, JX, and YM revised the manuscript. YC and HF prepared the HCBS. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Liwei Zhang for his supports in collecting data, and Lu Qiao, Dounan Lu, Xiao Zhang for their helps in the process of inputting data.

This work was supported by the LiaoNing Revitalization Talents Program (grant no. XLYC2007134) and the Funding for Teaching Leader of Bohai University.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923882/full#supplementary-material

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Homework in America

• 2014 Brown Center Report on American Education

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Tom loveless tom loveless former brookings expert @tomloveless99.

March 18, 2014

• 18 min read

Part II of the 2014 Brown Center Report on American Education

Homework!  The topic, no, just the word itself, sparks controversy.  It has for a long time. In 1900, Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies Home Journal , published an impassioned article, “A National Crime at the Feet of Parents,” accusing homework of destroying American youth.  Drawing on the theories of his fellow educational progressive, psychologist G. Stanley Hall (who has since been largely discredited), Bok argued that study at home interfered with children’s natural inclination towards play and free movement, threatened children’s physical and mental health, and usurped the right of parents to decide activities in the home.

The Journal was an influential magazine, especially with parents.  An anti-homework campaign burst forth that grew into a national crusade. [i]   School districts across the land passed restrictions on homework, culminating in a 1901 statewide prohibition of homework in California for any student under the age of 15.  The crusade would remain powerful through 1913, before a world war and other concerns bumped it from the spotlight.  Nevertheless, anti-homework sentiment would remain a touchstone of progressive education throughout the twentieth century.  As a political force, it would lie dormant for years before bubbling up to mobilize proponents of free play and “the whole child.” Advocates would, if educators did not comply, seek to impose homework restrictions through policy making.

Our own century dawned during a surge of anti-homework sentiment. From 1998 to 2003, Newsweek , TIME , and People , all major national publications at the time, ran cover stories on the evils of homework.  TIME ’s 1999 story had the most provocative title, “The Homework Ate My Family: Kids Are Dazed, Parents Are Stressed, Why Piling On Is Hurting Students.” People ’s 2003 article offered a call to arms: “Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third Grader? Exhausted Kids (and Parents) Fight Back.” Feature stories about students laboring under an onerous homework burden ran in newspapers from coast to coast. Photos of angst ridden children became a journalistic staple.

The 2003 Brown Center Report on American Education included a study investigating the homework controversy.  Examining the most reliable empirical evidence at the time, the study concluded that the dramatic claims about homework were unfounded.  An overwhelming majority of students, at least two-thirds, depending on age, had an hour or less of homework each night.  Surprisingly, even the homework burden of college-bound high school seniors was discovered to be rather light, less than an hour per night or six hours per week. Public opinion polls also contradicted the prevailing story.  Parents were not up in arms about homework.  Most said their children’s homework load was about right.  Parents wanting more homework out-numbered those who wanted less.

Now homework is in the news again.  Several popular anti-homework books fill store shelves (whether virtual or brick and mortar). [ii]   The documentary Race to Nowhere depicts homework as one aspect of an overwrought, pressure-cooker school system that constantly pushes students to perform and destroys their love of learning.  The film’s website claims over 6,000 screenings in more than 30 countries.  In 2011, the New York Times ran a front page article about the homework restrictions adopted by schools in Galloway, NJ, describing “a wave of districts across the nation trying to remake homework amid concerns that high stakes testing and competition for college have fueled a nightly grind that is stressing out children and depriving them of play and rest, yet doing little to raise achievement, especially in elementary grades.”   In the article, Vicki Abeles, the director of Race to Nowhere , invokes the indictment of homework lodged a century ago, declaring, “The presence of homework is negatively affecting the health of our young people and the quality of family time.” [iii] 

A petition for the National PTA to adopt “healthy homework guidelines” on change.org currently has 19,000 signatures.  In September 2013, Atlantic featured an article, “My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me,” by a Manhattan writer who joined his middle school daughter in doing her homework for a week.  Most nights the homework took more than three hours to complete.

The Current Study

A decade has passed since the last Brown Center Report study of homework, and it’s time for an update.  How much homework do American students have today?  Has the homework burden increased, gone down, or remained about the same?  What do parents think about the homework load?

A word on why such a study is important.  It’s not because the popular press is creating a fiction.  The press accounts are built on the testimony of real students and real parents, people who are very unhappy with the amount of homework coming home from school.  These unhappy people are real—but they also may be atypical.  Their experiences, as dramatic as they are, may not represent the common experience of American households with school-age children.  In the analysis below, data are analyzed from surveys that are methodologically designed to produce reliable information about the experiences of all Americans.  Some of the surveys have existed long enough to illustrate meaningful trends.  The question is whether strong empirical evidence confirms the anecdotes about overworked kids and outraged parents.

Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provide a good look at trends in homework for nearly the past three decades.  Table 2-1 displays NAEP data from 1984-2012.  The data are from the long-term trend NAEP assessment’s student questionnaire, a survey of homework practices featuring both consistently-worded questions and stable response categories.  The question asks: “How much time did you spend on homework yesterday?”  Responses are shown for NAEP’s three age groups: 9, 13, and 17. [iv]

Today’s youngest students seem to have more homework than in the past.  The first three rows of data for age 9 reveal a shift away from students having no homework, declining from 35% in 1984 to 22% in 2012.  A slight uptick occurred from the low of 18% in 2008, however, so the trend may be abating.  The decline of the “no homework” group is matched by growth in the percentage of students with less than an hour’s worth, from 41% in 1984 to 57% in 2012. The share of students with one to two hours of homework changed very little over the entire 28 years, comprising 12% of students in 2012.  The group with the heaviest load, more than two hours of homework, registered at 5% in 2012.  It was 6% in 1984.

The amount of homework for 13-year-olds appears to have lightened slightly. Students with one to two hours of homework declined from 29% to 23%.  The next category down (in terms of homework load), students with less than an hour, increased from 36% to 44%.  One can see, by combining the bottom two rows, that students with an hour or more of homework declined steadily from 1984 to 2008 (falling from 38% to 27%) and then ticked up to 30% in 2012.  The proportion of students with the heaviest load, more than two hours, slipped from 9% in 1984 to 7% in 2012 and ranged between 7-10% for the entire period.

For 17-year-olds, the homework burden has not varied much.  The percentage of students with no homework has increased from 22% to 27%.  Most of that gain occurred in the 1990s. Also note that the percentage of 17-year-olds who had homework but did not do it was 11% in 2012, the highest for the three NAEP age groups.  Adding that number in with the students who didn’t have homework in the first place means that more than one-third of seventeen year olds (38%) did no homework on the night in question in 2012.  That compares with 33% in 1984.  The segment of the 17-year-old population with more than two hours of homework, from which legitimate complaints of being overworked might arise, has been stuck in the 10%-13% range.

The NAEP data point to four main conclusions:

• With one exception, the homework load has remained remarkably stable since 1984.
• The exception is nine-year-olds.  They have experienced an increase in homework, primarily because many students who once did not have any now have some.  The percentage of nine-year-olds with no homework fell by 13 percentage points, and the percentage with less than an hour grew by 16 percentage points.
• Of the three age groups, 17-year-olds have the most bifurcated distribution of the homework burden.   They have the largest percentage of kids with no homework (especially when the homework shirkers are added in) and the largest percentage with more than two hours.
• NAEP data do not support the idea that a large and growing number of students have an onerous amount of homework.  For all three age groups, only a small percentage of students report more than two hours of homework.  For 1984-2012, the size of the two hours or more groups ranged from 5-6% for age 9, 6-10% for age 13, and 10-13% for age 17.

Note that the item asks students how much time they spent on homework “yesterday.”  That phrasing has the benefit of immediacy, asking for an estimate of precise, recent behavior rather than an estimate of general behavior for an extended, unspecified period.  But misleading responses could be generated if teachers lighten the homework of NAEP participants on the night before the NAEP test is given.  That’s possible. [v] Such skewing would not affect trends if it stayed about the same over time and in the same direction (teachers assigning less homework than usual on the day before NAEP).  Put another way, it would affect estimates of the amount of homework at any single point in time but not changes in the amount of homework between two points in time.

A check for possible skewing is to compare the responses above with those to another homework question on the NAEP questionnaire from 1986-2004 but no longer in use. [vi]   It asked students, “How much time do you usually spend on homework each day?” Most of the response categories have different boundaries from the “last night” question, making the data incomparable.  But the categories asking about no homework are comparable.  Responses indicating no homework on the “usual” question in 2004 were: 2% for age 9-year-olds, 5% for 13 year olds, and 12% for 17-year-olds.  These figures are much less than the ones reported in Table 2-1 above.  The “yesterday” data appear to overstate the proportion of students typically receiving no homework.

The story is different for the “heavy homework load” response categories.  The “usual” question reported similar percentages as the “yesterday” question.  The categories representing the most amount of homework were “more than one hour” for age 9 and “more than two hours” for ages 13 and 17.   In 2004, 12% of 9-year-olds said they had more than one hour of daily homework, while 8% of 13-year-olds and 12% of 17-year-olds said they had more than two hours.  For all three age groups, those figures declined from1986 to 2004. The decline for age 17 was quite large, falling from 17% in 1986 to 12% in 2004.  

The bottom line: regardless of how the question is posed, NAEP data do not support the view that the homework burden is growing, nor do they support the belief that the proportion of students with a lot of homework has increased in recent years.  The proportion of students with no homework is probably under-reported on the long-term trend NAEP.  But the upper bound of students with more than two hours of daily homework appears to be about 15%–and that is for students in their final years of high school.

College Freshmen Look Back  

There is another good source of information on high school students’ homework over several decades.  The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA conducts an annual survey of college freshmen that began in 1966.  In 1986, the survey started asking a series of questions regarding how students spent time in the final year of high school.  Figure 2-1 shows the 2012 percentages for the dominant activities.  More than half of college freshmen say they spent at least six hours per week socializing with friends (66.2%) and exercising/sports (53.0%).  About 40% devoted that much weekly time to paid employment.

Homework comes in fourth pace. Only 38.4% of students said they spent at least six hours per week studying or doing homework. When these students were high school seniors, it was not an activity central to their out of school lives.  That is quite surprising.  Think about it.  The survey is confined to the nation’s best students, those attending college.  Gone are high school dropouts.  Also not included are students who go into the military or attain full time employment immediately after high school.  And yet only a little more than one-third of the sampled students, devoted more than six hours per week to homework and studying when they were on the verge of attending college.

Another notable finding from the UCLA survey is how the statistic is trending (see Figure 2-2).  In 1986, 49.5% reported spending six or more hours per week studying and doing homework.  By 2002, the proportion had dropped to 33.4%.  In 2012, as noted in Figure 2-1, the statistic had bounced off the historical lows to reach 38.4%.  It is slowly rising but still sits sharply below where it was in 1987.

What Do Parents Think?

Met Life has published an annual survey of teachers since 1984.  In 1987 and 2007, the survey included questions focusing on homework and expanded to sample both parents and students on the topic. Data are broken out for secondary and elementary parents and for students in grades 3-6 and grades 7-12 (the latter not being an exact match with secondary parents because of K-8 schools).

Table 2-2 shows estimates of homework from the 2007 survey.  Respondents were asked to estimate the amount of homework on a typical school day (Monday-Friday).  The median estimate of each group of respondents is shaded.  As displayed in the first column, the median estimate for parents of an elementary student is that their child devotes about 30 minutes to homework on the typical weekday.  Slightly more than half (52%) estimate 30 minutes or less; 48% estimate 45 minutes or more.  Students in grades 3-6 (third column) give a median estimate that is a bit higher than their parents’ (45 minutes), with almost two-thirds (63%) saying 45 minutes or less is the typical weekday homework load.

One hour of homework is the median estimate for both secondary parents and students in grade 7-12, with 55% of parents reporting an hour or less and about two-thirds (67%) of students reporting the same.  As for the prevalence of the heaviest homework loads, 11% of secondary parents say their children spend more than two hours on weekday homework, and 12% is the corresponding figure for students in grades 7-12.

The Met Life surveys in 1987 and 2007 asked parents to evaluate the amount and quality of homework.  Table 2-3 displays the results.  There was little change over the two decades separating the two surveys.  More than 60% of parents rate the amount of homework as good or excellent, and about two-thirds give such high ratings to the quality of the homework their children are receiving.  The proportion giving poor ratings to either the quantity or quality of homework did not exceed 10% on either survey.

Parental dissatisfaction with homework comes in two forms: those who feel schools give too much homework and those who feel schools do not give enough.  The current wave of journalism about unhappy parents is dominated by those who feel schools give too much homework.  How big is this group?  Not very big (see Figure 2-3). On the Met Life survey, 60% of parents felt schools were giving the right amount of homework, 25% wanted more homework, and only 15% wanted less.

National surveys on homework are infrequent, but the 2006-2007 period had more than one.  A poll conducted by Public Agenda in 2006 reported similar numbers as the Met Life survey: 68% of parents describing the homework load as “about right,” 20% saying there is “too little homework,” and 11% saying there is “too much homework.”  A 2006 AP-AOL poll found the highest percentage of parents reporting too much homework, 19%.  But even in that poll, they were outnumbered by parents believing there is too little homework (23%), and a clear majority (57%) described the load as “about right.”  A 2010 local survey of Chicago parents conducted by the Chicago Tribune reported figures similar to those reported above: approximately two-thirds of parents saying their children’s homework load is “about right,” 21% saying it’s not enough, and 12% responding that the homework load is too much.

Summary and Discussion

In recent years, the press has been filled with reports of kids over-burdened with homework and parents rebelling against their children’s oppressive workload. The data assembled above call into question whether that portrait is accurate for the typical American family.  Homework typically takes an hour per night.  The homework burden of students rarely exceeds two hours a night.  The upper limit of students with two or more hours per night is about 15% nationally—and that is for juniors or seniors in high school.  For younger children, the upper boundary is about 10% who have such a heavy load.  Polls show that parents who want less homework range from 10%-20%, and that they are outnumbered—in every national poll on the homework question—by parents who want more homework, not less.  The majority of parents describe their children’s homework burden as about right.

So what’s going on?  Where are the homework horror stories coming from?

The Met Life survey of parents is able to give a few hints, mainly because of several questions that extend beyond homework to other aspects of schooling.  The belief that homework is burdensome is more likely held by parents with a larger set of complaints and concerns.  They are alienated from their child’s school.  About two in five parents (19%) don’t believe homework is important.  Compared to other parents, these parents are more likely to say too much homework is assigned (39% vs. 9%), that what is assigned is just busywork (57% vs. 36%), and that homework gets in the way of their family spending time together (51% vs. 15%).  They are less likely to rate the quality of homework as excellent (3% vs. 23%) or to rate the availability and responsiveness of teachers as excellent (18% vs. 38%). [vii]

They can also convince themselves that their numbers are larger than they really are.  Karl Taro Greenfeld, the author of the Atlantic article mentioned above, seems to fit that description.  “Every parent I know in New York City comments on how much homework their children have,” Mr. Greenfeld writes.  As for those parents who do not share this view? “There is always a clique of parents who are happy with the amount of homework. In fact, they would prefer more .  I tend not to get along with that type of parent.” [viii] 

Mr. Greenfeld’s daughter attends a selective exam school in Manhattan, known for its rigorous expectations and, yes, heavy homework load.  He had also complained about homework in his daughter’s previous school in Brentwood, CA.  That school was a charter school.  After Mr. Greenfeld emailed several parents expressing his complaints about homework in that school, the school’s vice-principal accused Mr. Greenfeld of cyberbullying.  The lesson here is that even schools of choice are not immune from complaints about homework.

The homework horror stories need to be read in a proper perspective.  They seem to originate from the very personal discontents of a small group of parents.  They do not reflect the experience of the average family with a school-age child.  That does not diminish these stories’ power to command the attention of school officials or even the public at large. But it also suggests a limited role for policy making in settling such disputes.  Policy is a blunt instrument.  Educators, parents, and kids are in the best position to resolve complaints about homework on a case by case basis.  Complaints about homework have existed for more than a century, and they show no signs of going away.

Part II Notes:

[i]Brian Gill and Steven Schlossman, “A Sin Against Childhood: Progressive Education and the Crusade to Abolish Homework, 1897-1941,” American Journal of Education , vol. 105, no. 1 (Nov., 1996), 27-66.  Also see Brian P. Gill and Steven L. Schlossman, “Villain or Savior? The American Discourse on Homework, 1850-2003,” Theory into Practice , 43, 3 (Summer 2004), pp. 174-181.

[ii] Bennett, Sara, and Nancy Kalish.  The Case Against Homework:  How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It   (New York:  Crown, 2006).  Buell, John.  Closing the Book on Homework: Enhancing Public Education and Freeing Family Time . (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004). Kohn, Alfie.    The Homework Myth:  Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing  (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2006).  Kralovec, Etta, and John Buell.  The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning  (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).

[iii] Hu, Winnie, “ New Recruit in Homework Revolt: The Principal ,” New York Times , June 15, 2011, page a1.

[iv] Data for other years are available on the NAEP Data Explorer.  For Table 1, the starting point of 1984 was chosen because it is the first year all three ages were asked the homework question.  The two most recent dates (2012 and 2008) were chosen to show recent changes, and the two years in the 1990s to show developments during that decade.

[v] NAEP’s sampling design lessens the probability of skewing the homework figure.  Students are randomly drawn from a school population, meaning that an entire class is not tested.  Teachers would have to either single out NAEP students for special homework treatment or change their established homework routine for the whole class just to shelter NAEP participants from homework.  Sampling designs that draw entact classrooms for testing (such as TIMSS) would be more vulnerable to this effect.  Moreover, students in middle and high school usually have several different teachers during the day, meaning that prior knowledge of a particular student’s participation in NAEP would probably be limited to one or two teachers.

[vi] NAEP Question B003801 for 9 year olds and B003901 for 13- and 17-year olds.

[vii] Met Life, Met Life Survey of the American Teacher: The Homework Experience , November 13, 2007, pp. 21-22.

[viii] Greenfeld, Karl Taro, “ My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me ,” The Atlantic , September 18, 2013.

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Time Management Statistics – 2024

Written by: Branka

Updated: February, 17, 2024

Planning ahead is everything when it comes to productivity and the biggest enemy of productivity is wasted time. Time management statistics are about showing just how often developing better skills, the implementation of time management techniques of the use of software can help us manage our work and life better. The ultimate goal is not just increased productivity and profit but the overall well-being and work-life balance that we owe ourselves to stay healthy. So let’s look at the stats about where our time goes.

Time Management Statistics (Editor’s Choice) 

• Only 20% of people use time audits. ( Development Academy )
• If you have only one thing to do, you will procrastinate all day. ( Trafft )
• The Netherlands has an average 29-hour workweek. ( LinkedIn )
• We are responsible for 44% of all interruptions. ( Firewall Times )
• Ten minutes of planning can save you two hours a day. ( LinkedIn )
• If you add 12 things to the to-do list you will finish at least seven. ( Trafft )
• The Eisenhower Matrix is the most effective time management strategy. ( Development Academy )
• The Pomodoro technique is the second most effective time management system. ( Development Academy )
• Children can’t always tell the difference between five and 15 minutes. ( Very Well Family )
• Around 47% of students say their high school did not teach organization and time management. ( Reliable Plant )

General Time Management Stats  

1. full-time employees work 8.5 hours per weekday on average..

But that’s not all, many work an additional 5.4 hours per day during the weekend as well. And hardly anyone thinks they are wasting time, yet there is the feeling of not being on top of things, being overwhelmed, and needing those extra hours in a day or an extra day on a weekend. The best work-life balance is achieved so far in the Netherlands where the average working week is 29 hours, time management statistics reveal.

( LinkedIn )

2. The average person uses 13 different methods to control and manage their time.

And that same average person spends two hours of the day recovering from distractions. They also check their email and/or IM app every six minutes and spend a total of three minutes on a task before taking up something else or something that requires their attention.

3. Only 10 to 12 minutes of planning can save you two hours a day.

Facts about time management show that thinking about what to do next and how, minute by minute added, can take a huge chunk of your day, which makes morning planning crucial.

The main thing to keep in mind when planning the day is to focus on all the most important work between 9 AM and 12 PM. This is peak productivity time when the human brain works the hardest and decision-making is not impaired by the amount of information received throughout the day.

Time management statistics at work have also shown that multitasking is a myth and that productivity drops by a full 40% when we take on more than one task at a time.

4. A cluttered desk can cost you an hour and a half every day.  

For those with a messy workspace, this is bad productivity news, as people spend seven and a half hours a week looking for things or being distracted by something in their close proximity. 

And it’s not just one man’s problem either; statistics about time management have found that entire companies spend around 16 days a year trying to locate paper documents. In this day and age of digital advancements searching for paper seems like a huge waste of time.

( Firewall Times , LinkedIn )

5. You can interrupt yourself as little as 20 seconds into a task. 

And it doesn’t matter if you are a professional and if it’s a task that requires high focus as self-interruptions are a very frequent occurrence. Up to 44% of all interruptions come from ourselves.

Time management facts reveal that these interruptions happen because of intruding thoughts, needing to do another task first, having a new idea, multitasking attempts, or just quitting and choosing something else.

( LinkedIn , Firewall Times )

6. 70% of people use a to-do list to get their most important tasks done. 

Plan to do one thing, you will drag it out, plan to do more and you will get better results. If we give ourselves a single thing to do that one task will be dragged out throughout the entire allotted time for it. Benefits of time management statistics further show that when people add 12 things to a list — at least seven of them will be completed.

7. 20% of people feel 50% of their day includes productive work tasks. 

Over 50% of professionals report that most of their time at work is unproductive, for only 3% of them less than half of the day is spent on productive tasks. Around 54% say that they can manage a 70% productivity rate during one day, according to time management and productivity statistics.

( Firewall Times )

Time Management Activities for Employees 

8. around 19% of employers track their salaried employees’ time..

Under a fifth of employers use time tracking software to track the time worked by their staff on a salary. This type of software is usually common for tracking the activities of hourly workers.

9.  The Eisenhower Matrix shows an almost 100% success rate among the respondents.

Around 50% of people who believe this is the best technique feel their work is always under control, according to time management skills statistics . Another 50% of people say that their work is under control four days out of a five-day workweek.

Also known as the Urgent-Important Matrix, this technique tells you which tasks to do (urgent and important), schedule (important but not urgent), delegate (urgent but not important), or delete (not urgent and not important). 

( Development Academy , Product Plan , Slab ) 

10. The Pomodoro Technique is considered the second most successful way of managing time.

Around 60% of people using the Pomodoro technique report feeling their work is under control for four or five days during the workweek and have no time management issues , statistics supporting time management show.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method suitable for everyone. It suggests working in shorter, focused, 25-minute intervals and then taking a five-minute break. After four 25-minute intervals, take a longer break. 

It is important that the breaks are not work-related and give your mind time to abandon the task and rest for a short while. Take a walk around the office, have a cup of tea or a glass of water, stretch or do a couple of simple exercises. It is best if you don’t spend these five minutes staring at the computer or turning to your phone.

This technique is so popular that some performance management software feature a Pomodoro timer.

( Francesco Cirillo , Development Academy) 

11. The average employee spends less than 30 seconds having a meaningful conversation with their child. 

Time management and stress statistics show it’s not all about revenue and productivity. Overwhelmed by poor time management, communication with loved ones suffers too. Working people spend on average less than two minutes a day talking about something meaningful with their partner and even less with their children. Combined with the fact that the cause of 95% of divorces is cited as “lack of communication” we see how far-reaching the consequences of poor time management can be.

( Balance Time )

Statistics Time Management Habits by Age

12. younger children often can’t tell the difference between 5 and 15 minutes even if they can tell the time..

These abilities can develop early on with the practice, and it is not too much to start as soon as elementary school. These are some steps and activities you can implement to ease children into the time management process:

• Turn time management into a fun activity
• Start before the puberty hits 
• Teach the children how to measure time
• Together, make a family calendar 
• Make a calendar for each person in the family
• Learn the children to stay on task
• Don’t overschedule 
• Schedule free time and fun activities
• Consider including rewards
• Learn about setting priorities

( Very Well Family )

13. Up to 80% of the grade you get is the result of 20% of what’s learned.

Time management statistics for high school students explain the 80/20 Pareto rule and how teenagers can use it to prioritize their tasks.

The principle says that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes. Adapted for school, it means that 80% of the results and grades happen because of 20% of the things we do and put our effort into.

Up to 80% of the grade you get on the essay or an assignment is the result of 20% of the quality of the content. Of course, it is near impossible to pinpoint which 20% at first glance, but there are some hints and tips.

Teenage time management statistics show that prioritizing plays a key role here as teenagers tend to put less urgent and easy tasks first. This is the wrong approach as one should first tackle the most important, hardest, and most urgent task.

( Allison Academy )

14. Teenagers spend an average of nine hours online every day. 

This includes social media as well as entertainment platforms.  While some school work does happen online, academic achievements (and homework) still require a lot of offline work, and poor grades are just one of the poor time management effects , homework and time management statistics show. Limiting app time is one great way to manage how you spend your day as a teenager. Also, with multitasking reducing productivity by 40%, listening to that podcast while doing math homework might not be the best idea.

15. 47% of college students say their high school did not prepare them for the organizational level needed in college.  

Up to 54% of students say they would perform better if they had the know-how to be organized and stay organized, time management in college statistics indicate.

Too many options have created an enormous fear of missing out amongst teenagers and college students and have them chasing social commitments without knowing how to refuse even things they are not 100% interested in. This is the age when boundaries are set, to your friends, and to yourself.

( Reliable Plant , Allison Academy )

16. 48% of students still manage their assignments and deadlines by handwriting in a notebook.

That is quite the number of students struggling with time management . Coincidentally 48% of students say partying is what “affects their grades.” College students and time management statistics record that 48.4% of students report not having enough time for doing course work.

Up to 87% percent of students think better time management and organization would help and 88% say they want to improve. 

17. 50% of students don’t use anything to help them manage their time.

Some 23% report they keep everything in their head and solely rely on memory. Only 21.7% use some kind of software to organize their notes and research even if 68% work on projects in pairs or groups. 

College student time management statistics show the most common way of sharing info is email as 66% of students use it. Paper exchange is used in 24% of cases.

( Reliable Plant )

In Conclusion

People tend to waste a lot of time and then pay the price in stress. With the help of two or three easy techniques, there is a good chance of better personal time management. At work, other factors are in play but similar principles apply and a lot of it is in our own hands. 

Both companies and individuals could benefit from time management training and software which could help prevent revenue losses and health consequences to employees, statistics on poor time management show. In any case, time management skills should not be left to chance, and adopting good practices at a young age has shown great results. However, it is never too late to take back control of your time.

What percentage of people use time management?

Only 18% of people use a time management system. A full 82% do not use anything while 33% make to-do lists in order to organize their tasks. Some 24% of respondents use email inbox as a time management tool. Around 12% use a diary to make plans in advance.

( Development Academy )

How many people have problems with time management?

Statistics about time management show that one of the effects of poor time management is that around 12.5% of people feel they don’t have things under control at work when it comes to time management. Over 20% of people feel that they are never in control of their work and time or that they have things under control one day a week.

Only 20% of people use a monthly time audit as a way to review their time spending and 49% of people say they have never tried out a time audit in their life.

What are the 4 P’s of time management?

The 4 Ps of time management, according to time management statistics , are:

• Plan – set the goals and tasks, and plan the time to work on them
• Prioritize – decide what tasks are the most important
• Push – push through and complete what you started without procrastination
• Party – allocate the time for fun activities.

( Canadian Small Business Women )

Sources: Development Academy , Trafft , LinkedIn , Firewall Times , Very Well Family , Reliable Plant , Product Plan , Slab , Francesco Cirillo , Balance Time , Allison Academy , Canadian Small Business Women

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Time Management Statistics

Proper time management makes a difference when you try to manage a business successfully. Aside from the benefits to the employer, time management plays a vital role in employee career development. Yet, companies are facing procrastination, and many struggle to sustain the level of employee productivity. This article will cover some interesting time management statistics that will reveal how much time we lose every day and the results of poor time tracking practices.

Time Management Statistics (Editor’s Choice)

• 49% of workers have never conducted a time audit to see how they spend their time. (Time Doctor)
• 82% of people don’t possess a dedicated time management system. (Time Doctor)
• Multitasking reduces productivity by up to 45%. (Tempo)
• Many executives spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings. (HBR)
• Two-thirds of employees experienced burnout at work. (Forbes)
• 88% of college students want to manage their time better. (Reliable Plant)
• Employees typically spend 80% of their workday on tasks with little value. (Trafft)
• Employees spend over 25% of their time looking for information necessary to perform their job. (The Economic Times)

General Time Management Stats

1. 49% of workers have never conducted a time audit to see how they spend their time..

‘Thanks to’ a lack of time management, employees lose many production hours. Currently, only one in five people follows a set work schedule. Analyzing how you spend your time can help you improve your productivity. Time management statistics reveal that calculating the wasted time and the time spent on tasks can help you get more things done.

(Time Doctor)

2. 82% of people don’t possess a dedicated time management system.

Most people simply rely on old and outdated methods of tracking their tasks like an email inbox or to-do lists. In turn, this leads to productivity and, by default, revenue loss. But many time tracking tools are built to simplify work and organize time adequately.

3. If a person spends 10-12 minutes planning a day, they will save up to two hours.

One of the interesting facts about time management is that several minutes of planning a day could save you two hours that could have been wasted. But unfortunately, sometimes even more hours are wasted, especially during an eight-hour workday. So, it’s best to prepare a proper schedule in the morning and then start the day.

4. Multitasking reduces productivity by up to 45%.

Multitasking can affect productivity as poor time management effects can. Time tracking systems help by precisely recording the progress of work without potential distractions such as talking on the phone or browsing online. Thus, managers can identify projects and tasks that take too much employee time and prioritize accordingly. It allows them to decide the risk vs. reward and properly allocate the time for each project, as statistics about time management demonstrate.

5. 87% of professionals think that breaks affect productivity positively.

Despite the logic that one does less work by taking breaks, professionals have found quite the opposite. In fact, most workers believe that breaks foster productivity.

(Firewall Times)

6. Six out of ten people admitted they couldn’t go through a workday without checking social media.

Based on time management statistics, some 60% of people can’t complete a workday without looking at their social networks. Further, two-thirds claim Facebook, used by 28.5% of the world , takes most of their time. This phenomenon is popularly called cyberloafing and costs companies around $85 billion in lost productivity and time each year.

7. 35% of workers would join a meeting, despite thinking it wouldn’t be productive.

Many employees join meetings out of obligation rather than a desire to bring something to the table. In fact, more than a third join meetings they know in advance won’t be productive. To have a beneficial meeting, statistics about time management show, organizers could set predefined objectives and invite only employees who will be accountable for them.

8. Employees spend 28% of their day at work on email.

In most companies, email remains the number one form of communication. So, no wonder an average worker spends around a third of their day on email. That translates into approximately 2.6 hours spent reading and replying or scanning documents to email . Typically, employees receive 120 messages each day and check their email every six minutes. However, some go even further. Thus, 16.3% check it every minute, and 19.2% check it every one to three minutes, according to time management stats.

9. Approximately 49% of employees say their companies don’t use employee monitoring software.

About half of surveyed employees confirmed their organizations do not use employee monitoring software. This, however, is a complex endeavor, especially since many workers don’t want to accept this form of tracking or are unfamiliar with it. At the same time, companies need to evaluate the impact this could have on employees’ morale and act accordingly.

10. 72% of workers said their productivity wouldn’t be affected by a monitoring tool.

Aside from the obvious benefits of time management, statistics show that tracking tools can foster employees’ performance. Namely, this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate their good work. On the other hand, only 10% of employees claim they would trust their employer more if they tracked their work.

The Effects of Poor Time Management

11. an average manager spends three hours per day handling unexpected interactions and issues..

It’s impossible to avoid unanticipated challenges at work, particularly if you own the company. Even if you plan and schedule tasks, some other urgent things might require your undivided attention. Statistics on poor time management indicate that the biggest problem is not scheduling some buffer time. This can help you prevent any delay of important tasks.

12. Recently surveyed employees claim they spend only 27% of their time on skill-based tasks.

Apparently, many employees are not doing what they were hired and trained to do. In turn, it leads to a decrease in engagement and productivity.

13. Business owners spend only 32% of their time on strategic and developmental aspects of their business.

According to time management statistics, business owners’ poor time management affects and is detrimental to their operations. Instead of spending more time developing their company, they have to do menial tasks. For reference, 73% of them would rather spend their time on strategic than operational activities. On average, they work 49.9 hours per week, although they think it should be around 41.7. Further, some of them (63%) work even more than 50 hours per week.

14. Business owners spend 32% of their time on email and web browsing.

Time management facts demonstrate that business owners claim they spend a lot of time on administrative tasks and emails. Moreover, they spend 25% of their time interacting with employees, while 21% goes to customer interaction.

15. Many executives spend nearly 23 hours a week in meetings.

No wonder many execs feel overwhelmed by numerous meetings, both necessary and unnecessary. Today, they spend more than double the time per week on meetings compared to the 1960s. On top of that, most meetings are poorly timed and organized. This pains the entire organization because each hour eats into the creative time. Ultimately, these dysfunctional meetings affect business operations primarily, time management statistics confirm.

16. Before 2020, 37% of organizations in North America didn’t have a formal policy on alternative work.

Then, the pandemic came, and many organizations were forced to develop ones. However, only 25% created some policies regarding remote and flexible work. That said, 60% claim they are planning to adopt similar policies in the near future. As a matter of fact, 58% of organizations with new policies expect them to be permanent. It is so since many have realized the connection between proper time management and productivity, statistics show.

17. Two-thirds of employees experienced burnout at work.

A recent study by Gallup did a great job pointing out the effect of poor time management. Apparently, 23% of surveyed employees felt burned out at work. Moreover, 44% felt burned out sometimes. These employees are 2.6 times more likely to actively seek another job. But even if they stay at their jobs, they have 13% lower confidence in their ability and performance.

Teenage Time Management Statistics

18. teens need nine hours of sleep at night to obtain higher grades..

Time dedicated to sleep is of crucial importance to teens and their time management plans. Typically, teens who sleep on average 7.3 hours per night can be characterized as sleep-deprived.

(Method Learning)

19. 47.7% of students spend less than 60 minutes a day on schoolwork.

A large part of research is focused on how much time students spend on homework and time management, statistics suggest. Namely, about 73.7% of students believe they manage homework time well. Moreover, only 15.7% of kids have difficulties with their homework, while 16.6% have to look for external help to complete their homework on time.

(Psicothema)

20. Teens need an additional 25% buffer time to complete projects.

When planning time, teens need to add some 25% buffer zone to be able to handle unpredicted activities. Those who manage to plan time well experience less stress. Not just that, but they have a better balance to succeed in different areas like social life, sports, and work.

21. 80% of a grade results from 20% of materials learned.

In order to achieve this, time management statistics for high school students mostly talk about the Pareto 80/20 rule. It reflects the fact that 80% of consequences come out of 20% of causes. So, translated into time management, putting effort into 20% of studies leads to 80% of school results.

(Allison Academy)

Time Management in College Statistics

22. over 48% of us college students claim they don’t have enough time to complete coursework..

Many American students face various time management issues. In fact, a staggering 87%, or nine out of every 10 surveyed students, think that better time management could help them get better grades. Although some studies confirmed that time management produces greater academic results and lower stress levels, many students still struggle to find a balance between their life and study.

(National University)

23. Students study 15-20 hours per week on average.

Reaching A levels seems more important than ever, especially to students who want to enroll at top universities. Also, higher grades are a must-have to choose preferred courses. Students spend many hours per week studying to accomplish this. However, with proper time allocation, an average college student, time management statistics show, could do this with up to 20 hours of studying per week.

(The Student Room)

24. 88% of college students want to manage their time better.

Some 48% of students still manage their assignments, deadlines, and contacts by handwriting them down in a personal calendar. But to manage their time properly and achieve better results, they need more efficient time management tools.

(Reliable Plant)

25. 74% of students spend less than 20% of their free time partying.

Sometimes it’s hard to coordinate social life, courses of college students and time management, statistics indicate. Despite the significant number that claim they spend very little time at parties, about 48% admit it impacts their grades. In fact, 10.4% cite that spending less time on parties and social life would help them obtain better grades. Further, 14.5% stated they spend between 20% and 30% of their time partying or socializing, while 13.6% said they need to go to classes more often.

Time Management Statistics at Work

26. employees typically spend 80% of their workday doing tasks with little value..

Differentiating more from less important tasks is a critical part of a time management process. Unfortunately, many people struggle with time management in this sense. They spend most of their day performing insignificant tasks. On the other hand, they spend only 20% of their time on something meaningful.

27. Employees spend between one and three hours surfing the internet for personal business at work.

As time management statistics show, most employers decide to introduce time-management activities for employees because they spend a lot of time visiting sports sites, chatting on social media, banking, and shopping while at work. HR statistics suggest that they spend up to three hours on personal activities. The loss of productivity resulting from it is the primary concern for employers and why they opt for various tracking tools.

(The Balance Careers)

28. The average UK office employee is productive for only two hours and 53 minutes a day.

Some statistics supporting time management suggest that the average worker is only productive for less than three hours per day in the UK. With that fact in mind, employers should definitely address the procrastination issue plaguing their workplaces. Some of the biggest distractions include visiting websites, reading news, and checking social media.

(vouchercloud)

29. Among top distractions at work, checking social media consumes 47% of employees' time.

In a recent study, employees were asked what they were doing instead of working. They were given several choices, and most of them selected social media. Next in line was reading the news (45%) and discussing personal activities with colleagues (38%). Making hot drinks (31%) and cigarette breaks (28%) were next on the list. Following these, text messaging (27%), eating snacks (25%), and preparing food in the office (24%) were the biggest distractions for a large number of surveyed employees. Finally, time management statistics reveal that calling friends or partners (24%) and searching for new jobs (19%) were last on the list.

30. Business owners spend 34% of their time on urgent and important activities.

These activities are crucial to all business owners. ‘Thanks’ to lack of time management, most of them don’t spend nearly as much time on them as they should. That makes the time tracking process even more vital, especially in differentiating unimportant from important tasks.

31. Most business owners are frustrated when they waste time on unscheduled communication (33%).

Other issues that frustrate owners include waiting for information (22%) and personality issues (16%). Although the last one doesn’t depend on them, the other two have a direct link to time management and stress, statistics confirm. However, incorporating systematic scheduling in daily operations could mitigate these frustrations.

32. Only 15% of US companies introduced their employees to a four-day workweek.

Despite the effects of the coronavirus, not many companies have compressed the standard 40-hour week into four days. Instead, a small fraction of organizations opted for a 32-hour week for the whole year or just a part of it. Yet, according to time management statistics, this work arrangement could benefit both employees and companies. Employees’ mental health could be better than ever, allowing them time to relax. In turn, companies would have more productive workers.

33. Employees spend over 25% of their time looking for information necessary to perform their job.

An average employee needs to use over four applications to perform a single business operation. This requires good time management skills, statistics show. Even then, it is time-consuming to switch between interfaces, type different passwords, and log into various tools. Aside from employees, managers too spend half of their time executing routine tasks. So, many companies have actually made work more difficult by implementing some IT solutions instead of simplifying it.

(The Economic Times)

34. An average worker spends 10 minutes and 30 seconds on a task before being interrupted.

In line with time management statistics, one study dealing with time management activities for employees demonstrated that a typical worker experiences many interruptions while doing their job. Some are external (56%), while others often come in the form of self-interruption. In fact, the latter occurs a staggering 44% of the time.

35. Workers’ performance peaks when they work undisturbed for 90 minutes.

According to research conducted by Florida State University, performance has a lot to do with time management. In fact, proper performance and time management systems could help workers achieve their full potential while completing their tasks.

36. 67% of employees spend too much time in meetings.

According to recent research, most surveyed employees cited spending too much time in meetings, resulting in distractions from their actual jobs. For reference, 51% of workers claim this impacts their work to some extent, while 16% said it affects them to a great extent.

The Bottom Line

In line with the above statistics about time management, we can conclude that this strategy works well for those who practice it. Without it, a company will experience revenue and productive time loss. Therefore, investing in time management pays off. The organization will improve productivity, but it will also boost employees’ satisfaction. Happy employees perform better and don’t procrastinate while earning money for the company in the process.

Time Management FAQ

What percentage of people use time management.

Only 17% of people actually track their time. That’s a small percentage if we consider that productivity decreases by 45% in multitasking without time-tracking. Many employees fear time tracking and struggle to accept it. However, employers should point out its benefits to the employees. For instance, statistics about time management reveal that it allows them to maintain a proper schedule and achieve work-life balance. (Prialto)

How many people have problems with time management?

Based on some studies, about 82% of people don’t use time management systems and rely on simple tools. For instance, the to-do list is not a proper system since it lacks complexity, yet many people still use it. In fact, 33% rely on it to complete their work. Moreover, 25% claim they simply deal with urgent, pressing matters first, while 24% use email inboxes to prioritize their work. (Clockify)

What are the four Ps of time management?

There are four actions leading to good time management. First, plan what you need to do short-term and long-term and set the goals; next, prioritize. When you have set goals, figure out how to prioritize them based on various factors. According to time management statistics, all you need to do is push through your tasks to complete them. Finally, it’s time to party, not literally though (sometimes even that). Party could mean saving some quiet time for yourself or spending time with friends. But, always leave some hours for unplanned fun. (Canadian Small Business Women)

• Time Doctor
• Reliable Plant
• The Economic Times
• Firewall Times
• Method Learning
• Allison Academy
• National University
• The Student Room
• The Balance Careers
• Vouchercloud
• Canadian Small Business Women

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How Does Homework Help With Time Management

The motive behind the exercise of homework is to keep the student abreast with the daily goings-on of the class and through thorough practice improve the student’s foundation in a particular topic. Besides those, homework develops one’s researching capabilities since often it extends beyond what is just being taught at school; it is a furtherance of the student’s knowledge and for that the student often has to spend a quite an amount of time looking up the internet or the library for some kind of aid.

Time Management

In-time submission is a universal pre-requisite for any piece of work. Marks deduction, denying to consider the homework or other such penalties on failing to meet the deadline act as a form of driving force for students. Students, therefore, are forced into putting their priorities to check and order them accordingly. In future, when in employment, these students have to meet several such deadlines and then it will be this exercise of college homework that would come in handy.

In addition, college assignments help with time management by enabling us to order our priorities. In this way, we get clear up some time for ourselves and engage in things we love doing, have a hobby. We can binge-watch TV shows, have a movie-marathon, go on a long drive and what not. Yet all of it without compromising on the important stuff since we will learn, eventually where to draw the line.

Recruiting help

Not everybody can master the management task. After bouts of driving around with friends, social networking, binge watching TV shows there is not much energy nor enthusiasm that could drive some out of their bed or couches to invest the remainder of their time into a productive exercise of homework, not even if he is made to write down a million times, in order to ascertain, the numerous benefits of this exercise.

Besides the non-enthusiast, there are those who just could not make out time from numerous engagements. There are many who genuinely cannot do homework, some probable conceptual fault that has remained unclear. For such folks, expert advice and suggestions are advisable. But how does one know whom to trust? The internet is flooding with homework help websites that are made up of a bunch of fraudsters.

How are online homework services helpful?

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20+ Little-Known Time Management Statistics For 2024

Updated · Jan 02, 2024

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Table of Contents

Time Management Statistics at Work

Time management education statistics, statistics on the benefits of time management, statistics on poor time management, effectiveness of time management to the overall well-being.

Time management is crucial for any company that values efficiency and output. Unfortunately, many organizations are yet to take it seriously, as about 82% of companies don’t use time management systems in their daily corporate activities.

Properly implementing time management practices improves productivity, sense of accomplishment, and record time for tasks, increasing sales and revenue for both employees and management. About 44% of workers admitted they spend the most time weekly in meetings, resulting in less time for focused work.

Below are some eye-opening statistics on time management and its numerous benefits to businesses and professionals.

General Statistics on Time Management 

Time management helps people work efficiently. It aids in setting goals and objectives for work or chores. However, only 18% of people adopt a time management strategy despite its importance, according to a 2022 study from Acuity Training.

There’s a need for more tools and awareness of proper time management. The stats below will support and explain this strategy’s importance. 

1. About 82% of people don’t use a proper time management system.

(Clockify, Development Academy)  

Development Academy cited that 82% of people don't use any time management system. 33% reported relying only on simple to-do lists to manage their work, and 25% said they perform tasks by dealing with what feels most important. 

In comparison, 24% rely only on email inboxes to manage their priorities and time. That’s because 86% of professionals prefer email as their business communication . 

Most people find time management tools to be bothersome or, ironically, time-consuming, so they rely on simple tools instead.

2.  Miners and loggers work an average of 45.5 hours per week as of April 2023.

(Bureau of Labour Statistics)

Statistics on time management show that those in the mining and logging industry worked the most in 2023, making 9.1 hours every day. Utility-related employees follow this with 42.6 hours per week, while leisure and hospitality staff worked the least, with 25.4 hours weekly.

Jobs that require laborious work have employees churn out more hours every week. This is due to filling workloads to reach quotas. The same is happening for gig workers who also have extended hours. However, they make 40% less than the minimum wage that labor employees often get .

3. 54% of college students think better organizational skills will improve their performance in school.

(Clockify, Reliable Plant)

Organizational skills are of utmost importance for various aspects of life— especially in academic studies and later careers. That said, 54% of students said their grades and overall performance would be better if they had better organizational skills.

The statistics show that 47% of undergrads believe their high school did not teach them enough organizational skills to prepare for college. Additionally, 48% of those who still need a management system complete their tasks by writing them down by hand. 

4. Office-based employees spend 2 hours of the day browsing through their email inboxes.

(Clockify, Independent UK)

A UK study on the habits of 2,000 office workers showed that employees waste an average of 2 hours checking their email inboxes daily. That’s 30 working days for an entire year.

They spend half of that time on:

• Checking inboxes for new messages
• Emails that could've been a quick call
• Accidentally re-reading old emails

Across the ocean, US citizens have a similar habit. Easy email access has encouraged American professionals to check emails every 37 minutes or 15 times daily . It’s typical for working individuals to browse email apps frequently.

Time management is most helpful in the workplace. With it, you can focus on tasks with the highest priority and dedicate the rest of your time to other essential endeavors.

However, time management isn’t used as much in today’s work environment. Despite the average working week of 40 hours or more , a lot of time is wasted in searching for documents, pointless meetings, and procrastination. These collectively lead to a 40% plummet in productivity .

Here are more time management statistics that support this concern: 

5. Companies spend as much as 28 days a year looking for paper documents.

(DocuSign)  

Despite the influx of organization technologies in the market, such as digitization and document management software, many companies still prefer doing things old-fashioned.

Unfortunately, these companies don’t have enough funds to build servers to house and help organize their data and make them available to their employees. Sacrificing time to store and look for old-fashion paper and folders is a budget-friendly compromise.

6. Senior managers spend 23 hours in meetings weekly.

(Gitnux) 

On average, employees attend 62 monthly meetings, and senior executives spend nearly 23 hours in them weekly. 

Consequently, many employees admit that unnecessary meetings waste time during workdays. 67% feel that spending too much time discussing matters hampers productivity, taking up 15% of an organization's time.

7. The average UK employee procrastinated 2 hours and 9 minutes daily in 2019.

(Factorial HR)

A 2019 MusicMagpie survey cited that among 2,000 British workers, the average procrastination time was 2 hours and 9 minutes daily. More specifically, men wasted more time than women, with 2 hours and 51 minutes, compared to their female peers’ 1 hour and 52 minutes.

The following year, the average UK worker spent roughly 2 hours procrastinating, costing businesses £21 billion.

One major cause of procrastination is screen time. All internet users spend about 6 hours and 37 mins online . This, of course, includes workers from the UK.

8. In 2021, India had the highest annual average working hours, with 2,117.

In 2021, India had the highest annual average working hours of 2,117. In sharp contrast, Germany’s more progressive views on work positioned the country at the bottom of the list, with 1,354 hours per year. That’s about 25.8 hours per week, nearly half of the traditional 40-hour week.

Other countries with lower working hours are:

• France — 1,490 hours per year
• The Netherlands — 1,497 hours per year

Based on the time management statistics for college students, it’s clear why today’s education can be inefficient. Most students lack the organization and time management skills to achieve better grades. 

Moreover, teachers have limited classroom time while dealing with distractions like uninterested pupils and relentless paperwork.

Here are statistics on how time management affects students and the education sector in general.

9. 95% of college students procrastinate.

(Web Tribunal, Solving Procrastination) 

95% of college students choose to procrastinate. As such, 87% of them admitted that with better time management skills.

Furthermore, most students admitted to using traditional handwritten notes on a calendar to manage their time. 50% said they don’t use one unified system to arrange their lecture notes, contacts, research, and assignments.

With the growing rate of technology, students now find it harder to stay away from the screen and procrastinate. For example, more than 50% of American TikTok users are aged 18 to 34, a range that’s likely filled with students; and they spend a daily average of 52 minutes on the app .

10. Ideally, students should devote 20 hours a week to studying.

(Ottawa University)

Students often need help planning their time because they usually cram when dealing with exams, rushing to study at the last minute.

According to Ottawa University, students should set aside 20 hours per week for learning. That includes the 15 hours they spend in classes and 5 hours for individual study sessions. 

11. Only 24% of teachers spend 10+ hours a week providing whole-class instruction.

(Ed Choice)

The 2022 National Survey of Educators in District, Charter, and Private Schools reported that  

81% of teachers used classroom time for direct, whole-class instruction. However, only 24% did that over 10 hours a week.

Moreover, 58% of the teachers stated that students with disciplinary issues often interrupted their class times. And 47% had to steal 1 hour to address those issues.

Teachers spend less time directly instructing students. That’s because they need breaks, the time between lessons, paperwork, unruly students, and other activities.

Happy employees are productive, and a productive workplace reaps financial benefits. According to time management skills statistics, employees can make their staff happier in many ways. From engaging staff to offering flexible working, here’s how it all comes together:

12. Only 17% of people track their own time.

(Team Stage)  

About 83% of employees don’t bother monitoring how they spend their time, despite the high availability of tracking apps. Only 17% track their time, even though they admitted that adopting time management practices increases productivity. 

Some reasons for these reservations involve time apps offering limited benefits and people finding tracking too laborious. 

Another significant factor is social media usage. Instagram alone eats up an average of 30.1 minutes of an American’s day . Minimizing social media exposure does wonders for productivity and mental health, but it’s difficult.

13. An average American worker spends 55 minutes commuting to and from work daily. 

(Zippia, Headphones Addict)  

In the US, employees commuting to work and back takes most of their time daily. On average, they spend 27.6 minutes traveling just one way or 55 minutes daily.

If managed correctly, commuting can be put to good use. 73% of commuters listen to audiobooks during their travels, using the “free time” to listen to novels or self-improvement books.

14. 25% of all professional jobs in North America were remote by the end of 2022.

(Forbes) 

In 2021, over one-third of organizations in the US could not make formal arrangements for remote working. Nonetheless, 14 enterprises with work-from-home policies were created and adopted the following year. More companies followed suit until 25% of all professional jobs in North America became remote by the end of 2022. 

As companies transitioned to remote and hybrid work setups, 60% planned to invest in virtual collaboration tools . These tools improve productivity even when workers are situated in their homes. 

Poor time management has many faces. Business owners waste up to a third of their week through low-value activities . People skip important meals and stop attending a health club after 30 days. Whatever shape or form, time wasters are evident in different corners of society. Below are prime examples:

15. Micro-business owners wasted approximately 16 hours on financial admin tasks in 2022.

(LinkedI n) 

Entrepreneurs spent 19% of their productive time on tasks accountants and bookkeepers could do. For sole trader companies, 31% of their week is spent just going to duties in the same area. No wonder 10% of small business enterprises fail within the first year .

As these small companies contribute towards GDP, it’s time for the government to aid in these processes. One way to do this is to subsidize affordable services and spread awareness about hiring the right professionals.

16. On average, staff spent over 12% of their daily time on social media in 2022. 

(Zippia) 

Since social media is now essential to people's daily lives, it takes up a large chunk of their time. Employees use social media apps to get on with the latest news and find updates about work, family, and the industry. 

However, it has become bothersome during working hours. An average person spends around 2 hours and 31 minutes on social media every day . That could have been used to do something productive.

17. 66% of full-time employees believed they needed a work-life balance.

(Gitnux, BetterUp) 

In 2021, 66% of full-time employees believed they had no work-life balance and needed it. For one thing, they found bringing work at home normal, a prime indicator of overworking. This leads to stress, poor time management, and difficulty setting boundaries at work.

Effective time management can boost your well-being, life satisfaction, and professional performance. 

According to Concordia University, those with effective time management techniques felt more in control of their lives and were less stressed . Additionally, they sleep more and are generally happier. 

More of these effects can be seen in the statistics below: 

18. In 2022, remote workers scored 75 on the Workforce Happiness Index.

(Hero Hunt)  

A Happiness Index (HI) is a survey that measures people’s happiness in 10 different areas of their lives. The index ranges from 1 to 100.

Time management and happiness statistics show that people working from home have a Workforce Happiness Index (WHI) of about 75, higher than the average.

This agrees with 57% of remote employees who said they had high job satisfaction. In contrast, only 50% of their office-working counterparts felt the same.

19. Sleeping 7-8 hours each night makes you happier and more productive

(Lifehack) 

Sleeping eight hours a night works wonders for your professional life. Getting adequate sleep promotes productivity, sets the mood for the day, and clears the mind for more work to be done. 

20. People get about 60 interruptions daily.

(Team Stage, Dokumen)

People receive one interruption every eight minutes, or about seven interruptions every hour, adding up to 50 to 60 of them a day.

The average interruption takes five minutes, for approximately four hours or 50% of the average workday. These can be cluttered desks, lost things, environmental distractions, random messages, and unimportant calls.

21. 59% of employees experienced burnout symptoms in 2022.

According to time management statistics for 2022, 59% of employees experienced extreme fatigue at some point in their careers. And 31% of them reported incredibly high-stress levels. In America, 61% of employees were reportedly burned out .

These are worrying figures considering stress and fatigue directly affect performance and health. For companies, these lead to low productivity and revenues. For the individual, these can cause physical and mental health issues and problems in family and relationships.

Time is the most precious, non-renewable resource. Time management is the allocation of that finite resources in work and play. It contributes to avoiding adverse outcomes like missing failing a business and experiencing burnout.

People are more deliberate in spending their days by promoting time management habits. They can get things done, feel satisfied with their work productivity, and still have enough time for personal matters. Good and effective time management can basically improve your life.

How many people struggle with time management?

82% of people don't use any time management system, and about 33% reported relying on simple to-do lists to manage their work.

What are the four types of time management?

The 4 Ds are: Do, Defer (Delay), Delegate, and Delete (Drop). Applying any of these categories helps you manage your limited time more effectively and stay focused on what matters most to you.

What are the 7 steps of time management?

Steps in time management include doing time audits, blocking out distractions, adopting schedules, avoiding multitasking, setting boundaries, keeping your mind away from distractions, and finding downtime for rest and relaxation. 

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Tips for time management in college

Julie holkovic shares her advice for managing time as a busy college student.

One challenge that many students face when transitioning to a college schedule and course load is how to manage their time.  This is especially important in engineering since students, aside from after their first year, do not get summers off due to the co-op schedule.

University of Cincinnati civil engineering student Julie Holkovic provides helpful time management tips that she has learned through her five years at the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Julie Holkovic

Civil Engineering

[email protected]

University of Cincinnati civil engineering student, College of Engineering and Applied Science Ambassador, and member of Chi Omega sorority.

Time management is something that is so critical as an engineering student with the course load because it is necessary to have free time to unwind. Through my time at UC, I have been able to keep great grades while also being on the executive board of a sorority, being involved in a student organization and spending lots of time with friends. 

Stay organized

Julie Holkovic was an executive board member of her sorority, a CEAS ambassador, and more during her time at UC. Photo/provided

The biggest piece of advice I have for time management is to keep track of everything in one place. Personally, I use my iPhone calendar for this, but Google calendar or different calendar apps are another option. I also utilize the Canvas to-do list on the mobile app. This feature lays out class assignments in chronological order by due date. This makes it easy to prioritize assignments and decide where to start when I sit down to do homework. 

Along with keeping everything organized in a calendar, I also set aside a block of time for homework at least twice a week and find it very helpful. For me, I always do homework on Sundays and another day throughout the week depending on my schedule each semester. When I get overwhelmed, it is much easier to take homework one step at a time, beginning with what is due the soonest and going from there. 

Having time to yourself is important. Keeping a calendar is helpful to give yourself more free time because it allows you to plan out your weeks in advance so you know when you need to set aside homework time. I also find it helpful to do assignments whenever I have a bit of free time because it allows me to keep my homework load at a minimum. 

Utilize organizational tools

The biggest improvement in my time management recently has been getting an iPad. The reason this helped me is because everything I need for my classes is in one place. For instance, I take notes on my iPad, do homework on my iPad, and store class files on my iPad. Having everything in one place like this makes both homework and studying easier because it is all together and ensures I will not lose anything. 

If you have an iPad, I love the note-taking app, Notability. If you do not have an iPad, that is no big deal. The main thing is to keep your assignments and schedule organized so you know where everything is and you can access it easily. How you choose to do that (whether it be an iPad, Google Calendar, a written planner) does not matter. 

Go to class

My final piece of advice is to always go to class. If you skip class, it will take you so much longer to try to teach yourself what you missed instead of learning from your professors. If you spend one hour in class learning the material, it will save you time in the long run. Odds are, it will take you much longer to try and teach it to yourself. The most important aspects of time management improvement are organization, writing down a schedule, and keeping track of your homework. I wish you all the best of luck and go Bearcats!

Featured image at top: UC student Julie Holkovic talks about the importance of time management as a student. Photo/Pixabay

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