Half of it, in my experience as an old white guy, is old white guys (not me) dumping their emotional shit on people who can’t afford not to listen to it.
The other half, and I forgot what it’s called, but there’s a rule in resource management that a particular office task will always expand to fill the time allotted for completion.
That all said, a very well balanced individual might be able to do serious focus work for six hours per day before their brain turns to shit, before their memory, recall, intuition, logic, and rationality get all fuzzy.