With scarcely any help from management, knowledge workers can increase their productivity by 20%. When we interviewed 45 such people across 39 companies in 8 industries in the United States and Europe, we found that by identifying low-value tasks to either drop completely, delegate to someone else or outsource, the average worker gained back roughly one day a week they could use for more important tasks. (We detail this process in our HBR article, "Make Time for the Work That Matters.")
