90% of my time is spent on updating spreadsheets instead of actually managing projects

These days I'm drowning in busywork, updating like five different tools just to say the same thing, and sitting in endless meetings about other meetings. The other day I realized I spent my entire morning just moving cards around in Jira and copy-pasting updates into different formats for different stakeholders.

Don't get me wrong, I know we need some process and tracking. But I miss the days when I could actually help solve problems and support my team instead of just documenting everything to death. The best PM I ever worked with barely touched our project tools, but somehow she always knew exactly what was going on and who needed help.

Maybe I'm just being dramatic, but I feel like we're turning into paper pushers instead of leaders. (Starting to wonder if the real project is managing all these project management tools...)

How do you handle all the admin stuff without letting it take over your whole day?