Moderate Personal Internet Use at Work Improves Productivity

I, as many others who work in IT, have figured this to be true already, but it’s nice to see confirmation:

A study performed by Dr. Brent Coker from the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne found that “people who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t.”

Most of us have also worked out that moderation is—as always—key. If you’re spending more than a fifth of your time at work doing non work related things, internet or otherwise, it almost certainly shows. As Dr. Coker notes, “those who behave with internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without.”

Originally published at Mining for Cows. You can comment here or there.