Web Surfing At Work Can Boost Productivity

An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal reports on a study into productivity and efficiency in the workplace, which found that people who are given a break to surf the web return to their work with 'lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement.' Researchers tested against two other groups; one continued working, and one was given a break that did not involve web browsing. They concluded that 'browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function.' In contrast, dealing with personal email was 'particularly distracting.' In the end, the researchers recommended that employers loosen restrictions on employee web access." This backs up a similar study out of Australia from a couple years ago.

Comments

I got a job in IT for this very reason

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, no one can tell the difference between surfing the 'Net for fun and me actually doing my job.

Re:I think we all know this...

[inviolet]

Yeah, we've been over this already. Just because I have 8 hours to spend at the office, doesn't mean I have 8 hours of focus to contribute.

I have more like 4 or 5 hours of focus, slightly less if I've had to sit in traffic on the way in. The remaining hours are for my inbox, lunch, surfing, defragging VMs, and so on. No matter how many different spins the "corporate efficiency experts" put on it, I only have 4 or 5 hours of focus per day. They should stop worrying what I do with the remaining time, there's nothing valuable there to be had.

I think the Europeans know this, and so I've come to realize that their 35-hour work week makes sense. I didn't always feel this way. For most of my 20s I railed against it in libertarian rage. Now I see that there is no point in asking humans to sit at the office more than 7 hours a day. It's just a waste of their leisure time, which would be better spent at home.