If you're using Microsoft Office 365 at work, you can use the relatively new app Delve Analytics to see if you're wasting all your time in crummy meetings.
Go to the Microsoft Office portal at http://portal.office.com, open Delve, and click Analytics from the left-hand side of the window, as Microsoft explains in a blog entry.
Delve Analytics has been available since late 2015, but this is the first time Microsoft has publicly discussed its features. But it's a great example of how Microsoft is trying to take all of the data that's hidden inside Office and turn it into something that helps people work a little smarter.
Delve Analytics offers a whole bunch of metrics, some of which you'd probably not know: You can find out how much time you're spending on e-mail, or how many hours you work outside of your usual 9-to-5.
Microsoft
But possibly the most useful information Delve Analytics can give you is how many of your meetings are redundant, unproductive, or just too darn long. With that data, you can invite fewer participants or cancel meetings that are just being held for the sake of meetings.
(This seems to be a great example of Microsoft using software to solve its own problems - one of the biggest complaints we've heard from Microsoft employees over the years has been "too many meetings.")
Microsoft
You can even set goals for yourself, such as how many hours you can get to yourself and uninterrupted by meetings. It's a lot to take in.
Indeed, the main Microsoft Delve app lets you track what others are working on, kind of like a combination between Facebook's graph search and Office. With all that data flying around, and now the ability to analyze it, it's no wonder Delve is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's favorite Microsoft app.