The pie charts show the distribution of time across six activities in one US office from 1980 to 2000. Overall, phone use, paper documents, and meetings took up the largest amount of time initially, though they all exhibited a considerable fall. Emailing and grapevining, by contrast, followed a rising trajectory, with the latter becoming the dominant activity. Notably, the percentage of time spent on in-person communications and other activities registered no change.
The proportion of time allocated to using phones, paper documents, and meetings was the highest in 1980. Phone use, for example, accounted for a striking 32%, followed by paper documents at 20%, marginally higher than the 16% recorded for meetings. Over the period, however, sharp declines were observed, with the figures reaching 12%, 10%, and 6%, respectively.
Activities such as emailing and especially grapevining experienced marked growth, taking more time in 2000. The latter stood at a mere 2% initially, while the former accounted for 0%. By 2000, however, both had risen substantially. The percentage of time devoted to emailing reached 8% in 2000, but what exhibited the most pronounced increase was grapevining, as the figure soared from just 2% to 30%, thereby consuming the largest amount of time.
The only activities that remained unchanged, meanwhile, were face-to-face communication and other activities. Both in 1980 and 2000, in-person communication accounted for 14% of working time, compared with 15% for other activities.