Can the upcoming time change turn productive, only-on-the-web-for-work employees into zombie cyberslackers bent on destroying efficiency?

Researchers in a report garnered from pouring over Google searches from the last six years say data show the shift to daylight saving time and its accompanying loss of sleep cause employees to spend more time than normal surfing the Web for content unrelated to their work, resulting in potentially massive productivity losses on the day after the event.

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Web searches particularly related to entertainment rise sharply the Monday after the shift to daylight saving time when compared to the preceding and subsequent Mondays, according to D. Lance Ferris, assistant professor of management and organization in Penn State University's Smeal College of Business and colleagues David Wagner of the Singapore Management University; Christopher Barnes of Virginia Tech University and Vivien K. G. Lim of the National University of Singapore.

People exhibit poorer self-control when they're tired, the researchers said that the lost sleep due to the time change -- an average of 40 minutes that Sunday night -- makes employees less likely to self-regulate their behavior and more inclined to spend time cyberloafing, or surfing the Internet for personal pursuits while on the clock, according to the study.

Ferris says while a few minutes of personal Web surfing now and then may seem harmless, given that about one-third of the world's countries participate in some form of daylight saving time, the researchers that "global productivity losses from a spike in employee cyberloafing are potentially staggering."

Research about the study appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

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