| … you’re probably 9 percent more productive than your co-workers — unless you’re an internet addict. That’s according to new research out of the University of Melbourne, which found that Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) improves productivity by giving internet-centric workers a chance to refocus their minds between tasks. The increase is startling; workers who spend as much as 20 percent of their office time leisure browsing actually get more work done than workers who don’t. How can you tell if you’re edging up to that 20 percent threshold? Rescue Time, for one. [%comments]
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Great philosophy, thanks Freakonomics!
The correlation between leisure browsing and productivity doesn’t necessarily imply causation.
It could be the other way around: the most productive workers have more available time to browse the web, while the least productive ones are too busy trying to achieve their goals and don’t have time to waste on the web.
I have written about the fallacies possibly committed by this study in my blog post: http://ambujsaxena.blogspot.com/2009/04/net-productivity.html
Causality or Correlation??
Have you ever heard the saying that if you want something done quickly, give it to someone who’s busy? I think we’ve all experienced situations where we actually do better work if we have less time. If we have too much time, we either fritter it away, or increase the scope of the project to monstrous proportions. Often we inflate work to fill available time. Thus, in many circumstances, having less time can help focus a person. It makes complete sense to me, which is why I always want to define productivity by tasks accomplished to standard, rather than hours logged at the work station. They are two very different measurements.
How productive is it to download a virus and put the entire network down for several days?
Note: I’m not saying that freakonomics, specifically, has security issues.
Couldn’t it simply be that people with lively minds are both likelier to be productive and liklier to browse the net?
Awesome.