Here are the nine top reasons why you and your employees can’t finish 40 hours worth of work in 40 hours.

1. Meetings are consuming 30 – 50% of your day and accomplishing far too little.

The average employee spends 30% of their time in meetings – that’s 12 hours – a full day and a half. Executives spend upwards of 50% – that’s often 40 hours out of 60 to 80.

I’ve never met a meeting that couldn’t be cut in half or better. The missing ingredient is clarity. You don’t need more rules, advice, or formats for running meetings, you need clarity. There are only six outcomes for any meeting and if you don’t know which one you are pursuing at any moment, you are wasting time. If you and your employees know exactly what must be different when the meeting ends, your company would have half as many meetings that last half as long.

2. You receive hundreds of emails each day, most internal and creating no value for which customers are willing to pay.

With so much email, most people admittedly read only the first sentence. That doesn’t mean the writers didn’t invest an hour or more carefully crafting the words that are never read. The wasted time on both ends is ridiculous.

You’ve got careful writers who agonize because they can only guess what readers are thinking and how they will respond; so they struggle to cover all the bases. You’ve got writers who think if they just get everything down in writing, they can resolve problems once and for all. You’ve got fearful writers who copy everyone because they don’t want to be blamed for leaving anyone out. I could go on. The problem is a lack of clarity. Email is the simplest way to feel like you are accomplishing something. When people don’t know what they need, from whom, or how to best get it, they can always send an email.

3. The “urgency” of meeting preparation pushes important tasks into your evening and weekend hours.

Not only do meetings control your time and chop up your day, they also override your priorities. No one likes walking into meetings unprepared so preparation tasks take precedence over real priorities. On top of that, meetings spawn assignments that may or may not be relevant to other priorities. As a matter of fact, groups intent on ensuring meeting time is well spent are extra vigilant about assigning something to someone!

4. You are managing by consensus.

Managing by consensus is proof positive of a lack of clarity. People manage by consensus because they don’t know how to make smart decisions that will be accepted. There are only three reasons to involve anyone in a decision and four steps to ensuring commitment. That’s clarity and it sure beats managing by consensus!

5. Everyone is waiting for someone to get back to them.

In a recent coaching session, my client commented that a major project was delayed because he was waiting for a response from a colleague. When I stopped him to ask why, he lamented that he’d forgotten to specify a drop-dead date. But that wasn’t the problem.  I asked two questions. What did he ask for and what did he need to proceed. He asked her to review the plan. What did he need? Approval to proceed. The next day he asked specifically for approval to proceed and she said yes. That’s clarity and it is missing more often than not.

6. You and your employees are reporting and reviewing progress – for hours.

Every request for a progress report spawns tremendous activity from the top down into every corner of the organization. Work stops while employees turn their attention to reporting. If there is little to report, they spend time trying to figure out how to look good. If the news is bad, they scramble to cover up or make quick progress, often against their better judgment. The time loss is huge. You don’t want to know what’s been completed and whether they are on plan, especially since plans rarely reflect reality. You want them to know that you are counting on them to know why they believe they will meet expectations so they can watch for obstacles and do something about them. The reports and plans are not the goal. Results are what matter. That’s clarity and it gets lost far too often.

7. You are having the same discussion you had yesterday.

People will never agree on the route without agreeing on the destination. Nonetheless, people try it all day long. They argue about alternatives. Should we do X or should we do Y? They don’t agree first on how they would recognize a good alternative if they ran across one. What criteria should govern this decision? What are the objectives? Without this clarity, you shouldn’t be surprised that the same decision must be revisited again and again.

8. You and your employees are over-producing and executives are the cause more than they realize.

The sources of over-production include perfectionism, “while we’re at it,…,” and ambiguous requests. While all three represent a lack of clear objectives, ambiguous requests by executives are often the most costly. “Look into this for me” can trigger significant research, multiple meetings, and a comprehensive plan by an employee eager to please when all the executive wanted was a gut reaction as to whether an idea holds any merit or not.

9. You are being controlled by your technology.

Constant upgrades, password change requirements, expired credit card issues, and outright bugs consume your time and energy. The more devices, apps, and accounts you have, the worse it is. But the bigger problems are products such as contact management systems and spreadsheets that can make the simplest tasks incredibly onerous and time consuming. These product provide complete flexibility to add another field so you can sort in a new way. But do you really need it? Because every new field needs to be filled by everyone involved with consistency and accuracy. This is how technology starts to take over your life. Take it from a former software engineer, technology can add infinite complexity. Clarity is critical so that you chart the simplest and shortest path between where you are and what you need to achieve.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com on October 17th, 2015.