A new study from the University of Melbourne shows that workers who spend less than 20 percent of their office time to take “short and unobtrusive breaks” to surf personal, less productive sites were 9 percent more productive than those who tried to tirelessly keep their nose to the grindstone. We’ve long been keen on buckling down for a productive dash, followed by a little break, so an 80/20 split seems pretty reasonable. Maybe the best part of this study, though, is the coining of the acronym WILB, for “Workplace internet leisure browsing.” [Wired via Reuters]
Matt
April 4, 2009 at 11:25 AM
What a complete crock of populist crap. Go for a 5 minute break.
Report PermalinkValamas
April 4, 2009 at 12:50 PM
This happened to me the other day. My manager gave me the wrong information on something I had been working on for many hours. At that point i cleared my head with some casual browsing, then forged ahead to fix the problem and resume completing the project.
Casual browsing is one thing, being intreupted by personal email or chat windows is different.
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