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.

CAN is important

[d.the.duck]

Also, hitting on women at work CAN get you laid. Strangely it also CAN get you fired.

This has been true for me

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I can think of a number of times I've gotten stuck on a scripting problem, distracted myself on the web for a couple of minutes, then come back and have had the solution become clear to me. I don't really know why this happens but I suspect it's because I'm willing to dump where I'm at and start over from the beginning to look for the problem. Im not sure how much sense that makes so I'll put it another way: I needed a mental reboot.

I don't personally believe productivity takes any real hit from web broswing. Even if it did, I think the info that is gathered from it can make up or even exceed that gap. I had a boss ding me once for talking to someone on ICQ. A month or two later he needed me to find some info. I knew the dude from ICQ had experience with that particular product and he was kind enough to fill me in. My boss was reasonable enough to take back the comment he made.

Re:I think we all know this...

[bberens]

Having had "physical labor" jobs and "thinking" jobs I find I need much more breaks when doing "thinking" jobs. I also require more sleep. Back in the days of physical labor I could work 12-14 hour days, get 4-5 hours of sleep and be back on my feet no problem. I'm capable of having 10-12 hour days doing work that requires a lot of mental focus but that's not something I can sustain for more than about a week. And after that I need a bit of a recovery period before I'm back to normal.