

Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says - tilt
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904070604576518261775512294.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews

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TeMPOraL
Well, it doesn't help me. I mean, why I'm even reading this? I should be
working right now...

Jokes aside, I find that reading stuff on the Internet often makes me unable
to work at all - the harder problem I have to solve, the more I want to look
for something interesting on the 3rd page of HN. But it's the usual
procrastination stuff, covered many times on HN.

My God, I actually installed a Twitter client for Emacs today while
procrastinating...

~~~
tseabrooks
"Math is hard, let's go shopping"...

I find that when I have something difficult, or new, to do I want to read HN
and other sites more frequently. However, once I start on those hard / new
tasks they are invariably engaging enough to keep me focused. It's just that
initial hump.

~~~
Sukotto
One trick to help get started is to make it just annoying enough to switch to
the distracting task that you don't bother. Editing your hosts file which you
then have reverse before surfing the distracting stuff, creating a separate
login for the distracting stuff, closing your laptop lid on every task
switch[1], etc.

[1] [http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-
corre...](http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-
extensio/) This works surprisingly well

~~~
mcn
Thank you for that; I recently tried to find out how he implemented his 30
second distraction-delay but I had misattributed the quote and so my search
was unsuccessful. I think that the delay is a powerful idea.

The approach I'm experimenting with is a "productivity mode" toggle in a
tiling windows manager which disables most of the windows manager commands,
leaving me mostly stuck in whatever application(s) were already visible until
I toggle it off. The toggle off function has a 30 second delay.

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nhebb
This doesn't tell you anything without knowing how many hours a day the test
subjects usually surfed the web. A lot of people are addicted to it, so this
just may be the result of satisfying a craving. By this logic, maybe
alcoholics are more productive if allowed a shot of bourbon at break time.

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HarrietTubgirl
Oof, it's hard to draw conclusions from this.

\- The stuff the subjects are doing bears only a passing resemblance to the
work that most of us have to do.

\- Surfing the web is probably what those students are doing for breaks in
work anyway on a regular basis [If you gave them no restriction, how many of
them would choose surfing the web? How much is this study is just a measure of
"if you let people do what they want on their breaks it's better than
restricting them"]

\- Were students paid differently if they performed better? Were there any
incentives to perform the task at all?

\- How is the control group of a study measure effectiveness of break
strategies one that's doing more work? :(

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samlevine
Of course web surfing helps at work. First search result for "vim highlight
search" on Google is:

[http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_match...](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_all_search_pattern_matches)

Just to make sure we're highlighting everything we search for set:

:set hlsearch

Next, click on the link in the above page that says:

"Searching"

From the resulting page:

"In normal mode you can search forwards by pressing / then typing your search
pattern. Press Esc to cancel or press Enter to perform the search."

So press /, e and finally enter. Done. Crap, I'm missing the upper case Es?
Search for "vim search case insensitive", get:

<http://joysofprogramming.com/case-sensitive-search-vim/>

Oh, I need to do:

:set noic

Try it again, get all the letters highlighted, 3-5 minutes later I'm done.

Why was websurfing more productive in this case? Obviously because I can spend
the remaining 15 minutes posting the trivial solution to HN. ;)

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pyoung
The title is a little misleading. The subjects were forced to work at a fairly
menial task, and then were given a short break. A large majority of white
collar workers manage their own schedule and therefore the web can be a
distraction from their work throughout the day.

------
5h
never have I bookmarked a url for future reference more quickly.

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grimen
All I know is that without Google, IRC and sites like Stackoverflow made me
not quit development. Reminding myself of those obscure bugs in _major_ 3rd
party libraries that was found in the past that I would never have solved
alone. People that beleive the web is a roadblock for a developer needs a
reality-check.

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bugsy
> Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says

The problem is the study didn't really find that at all. The experimental
design was so contrived and artificial it is unpersuasive, difficult to
imagine, and unestablished by the data, that it applies to real work
situations.

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clistctrl
Like everything else in life, when obtained in moderation.

