IDEA #50 Online procrastination – the key to higher productivity
Web surfing can serve as a powerful mental restorative function and lead to increased productivity in workers . . . so long as they don’t check their emails. What you need to know In 2011 Vivien K.G. Lim and Don J.Q. Chen of the National University of Singapore undertook a study of 96 undergraduate management students to assess the impact of web surfing on their productivity. Initially, 96 students spent 20 minutes highlighting all the letter ‘e’s that they could spot in a document. The students were then grouped into three sets. The first group (control group) spent ten minutes continuing with a similarly tedious task; the second group were allowed a ten-minute break to do anything of their choosing – except go online (rest group); and the third group were allowed to do
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whatever they liked online for ten minutes (web surfer group). Then, all three groups spent the next ten minutes highlighting letters again. The results were surprising. In the final bout of letter highlighting, the web surfers were more productive (i.e., highlighted more letters correctly) than the control group and 16 per cent more productive than the rest group. The web surfers also reported higher levels of engagement and lower levels of both mental fatigue and boredom than the other two groups.
Why it matters The Internet plays a huge role in the way the business world works. Increasingly, some organisations – concerned with improving productivity and efficiency – have sought to ban or restrict personal Internet use at work. Lim and Chen’s research brings into question the effectiveness of such interdictions. However, the researchers have emphasised in previous studies that there is an important cognitive distinction between online surfing and checking emails. In the case of the former, the experience is restorative and pleasurable – you can, in essence ‘zone out’ while surfing the web. However, checking emails is much more mentally demanding and draining and therefore less restful.
How this will change the way you work •
Strike a balance. If your organisation has a draconian ‘no personal Internet usage’ policy you should certainly reconsider this. However, you can go too far in the opposite direction – you may want to put a time limit on how long people can use the Internet for non-work-related functions. Software packages exist that allow access to normally restricted websites (i.e., non-workrelated) to be lifted for a certain amount of time; this could help give people the break and productivity boost they need without allowing people to spend too much time cyberloafing or checking emails.
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Aim for reasonableness. In the words of Chen, ‘acceptable Internet use policy does not mean a total ban of non-work-related usage of the Internet; it should aim to work out a reasonable balance
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between some personal web usage and work. More resources should be devoted to curbing detrimental cyberloafing such as emailing while some web browsing should be allowed as a coping strategy against work stress.’
What you might say about this ‘Let’s take a more relaxed stance on our Internet usage policy.’ ‘We’ve been working hard – everyone take a ten-minute break. Feel free to get online and do whatever you need to do.’ ‘I don’t really care what you do so long as you get the job done.’
Where you can find out more ‘Impact of cyberloafing on psychological engagement’, V.K.G. Lim and D.J.Q. Chen, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, 2011. ‘Cyberloafing at the workplace: Gain or drain on work?’, V.K.G. Lim and D.J.Q. Chen, Behaviour& Information Technology, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2012.
This extract was taken from 101 Business Ideas that will Change the Way you Work (9780273786191) by Antonio Weiss. Published August 2013 and available in all good bookshops
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