Hi Joyce
I know exactly what you mean
A lot of the time i just find myself doing fiddly little organisational things just to tick the right boxes, as opposed to getting on with meaningful research. What gets on my nerves the most at the moment is my second year report. It's a progress report, nothing more than that and is assessed internally by my supervisory team. Having not told me what to do regarding what was expected, i put together a briefish report............ a week later supervisor throws it back at me and gets angry.
She never told me it had to be thesis standard. As things are i'm behind with research due to a bad first year, and now i am still correcting my pointless little report to the thesis standard she expects. As well as this she gives me really fiddly stuff to do for corrections, and censors aspects of the truth in my report which might make the project look bad when it's the truth. I can never win, and now my boss thinks i'm thick as well.
Either way, whether you wanted to hear that or not is up to you, but i know how you feel
All the best