Pre-tenure strategies to spend less time on bureaucracy, and more on research In the past year, as faculty, I have spent 33% of my time on paperwork and bureaucratic activities. This does not include service (committees,department meetings, etc), and is after hiring a full time laboratory manager! It is simply the filling out of forms, arguing to retain and expand my space, a wide variety of mandatory training, and being asked to justify and verify a wide variety of things. 

I would like to spend less time interacting with the vast number of middle management at my school, and focus on what I enjoy: research and teaching.  However, there always seems to be another 'mandatory' thing.  I do not have tenure, so I cannot yet simply tell them to go away. Any suggestions on how to spend less time on bureaucracy?
Learn to say "NO" (especially to people that do not decide about your tenure)

It is discussed in length here and here but these are my favourite points:


Short and simple answers like "Thanks for coming to me but I’m afraid
it’s not convenient/possible right now" or "I’m sorry but I can’t help with this (at the moment)". Don't start to write endless time-eating apologies.
Avoid feeling guilty about saying "no".
Interrupt the "yes"-cycle using phrases like "I'll get back to you" -
you might not hear from them again if it was not that important after all (which is the case for very many things). My ex-boss did this on a master level: we would only answer requests from people lower in the food chain if the requests were already reminders - the original request was ignored straight away. (I personally think that this is a bit over the top but it worked for him (post-tenure)).