How did you find this story?



Maybe you clicked on it through a social network. Maybe you logged into The Atlantic's website and liked the headline. Or maybe your mom emailed it to you. Either way, let's be honest adults, shall we? You are not working right now. Not only that, but you are reading a story about not working. Why would you ever do this?



To enhance your workplace productivity, of course!* Love it when science corroborates our base instincts.



Taking a minute to relieve your brain from boring work duty has its benefits, argues a study out of the National University of Singapore. Don J.Q. Chen and Vivien K.G Lim write in their paper, "Browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function." For you econ folks, it works like diminishing marginal returns: the more you work, the worse your end product--at some point you need to pause and refresh. Screwing around online has that power, explain the authors. When browsing the Internet, people "usually choose to visit only the sites that they like--it's like going for a coffee or snack break. Breaks of such nature are pleasurable, rejuvenating the Web surfer," researcher Dr. Lim told Silverman in an email. According to a 2009 study out of the University of Melbourne, while workers might spend paid minutes watching a YouTube video of a panda sneezing, or what have you, they more than make up for that time later in the day. "People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration," researcher Dr. Brent Coker told Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng. "Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a day's work, and as a result, increased productivity." The research found that those who spent less than 20 percent of their time perusing the Internet's silly offerings were 9 percent more productive than those who resist going online.

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.



*Editors note: We trust in this story, but we have a hard time keeping it straight with other reports that humans are horrible multitaskers and Internet abuse costs thousands of dollars of profit per employee. We plan on spending the rest of the day "investigating" the issue by running an uncontrolled experiment wherein we spend the rest of the day at Buzzfeed.com.



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