Sunday, April 5, 2009

Websurf to Prosperity!

I saw this in a number of places, including the Boston Metro (local free paper), Stephen's Lighthouse, LISNews, and Wired

Because the news is that awesome. 

The linked pieces refer to a study from The University of Melbourne suggesting that moderate use of the internet for personal reasons during worktime is associated with increased productivity. Please note the responsible mention of the obvious qualification that this applies only to moderate internet use, so we can't use this as an excuse to read an online novel everyday or anything (drat!).

The theory is that taking occasional short breaks to browse the web allows people to then return to work tasks with refreshed concentration. Sounds good to me. It makes sense that taking a break and coming back to something after a few minutes would result in renewed energy for the task at hand.

Now you have to wonder if the same mental break benefits would apply for people in jobs where you can't simply move from one open browser window (with my Google docs spreadsheet) to another (with my Twitter feed) to take this break. The study is happy news for people working in offices with computers, but provides little comfort to those on assembly lines, I expect. 

Clearly, we must look into providing internet-capable cell phones to every worker as a way of boosting national productivity. 

Oh, come on, you can't say that's not the first thing you thought of too. 

It wasn't? Well, excuse me for being obsessed with internet on phones. 

2 comments:

erinserb said...

Oh, gee, there goes my suggestion to resurrect, ooops, initiate the "siesta". Just think, it is a green alternative to recreational web-surfing - it doesn't use electricity :-)

A'Llyn said...

Good point! Afternoon naptime, turn off all the lights...save energy and rejuvenate!

I could get behind that.