Fine Print

My RSS reader was jammed today after the weekend, so I quickly scanned the headlines and an article by Mark Evans caught my eye titled “Is Digital Productivity Dead?”

The crux of the article is that the average U.S. worker spends 28 per cent of their day doing non-work stuff. So, in a regular 9-5 job (remember those?), they are – allegedly – shirking for nearly a third of their day and getting paid for it.

Evans writes, “My sense is most knowledge workers are productive; it’s just a different kind of productive.” That’s a statement that I have to agree with.

So, if you wander past a colleague’s office, and see them hands clasped behind their head and staring out of the window, do you assume (a) Wow! What a slacker! And he’s getting paid for that too! or (b) Wow! What a smart dude! He’s just worked his butt off on a great piece of work and now he’s taking a 10-minute stretch break to alleviate eyestrain before the next task, therefore being even more productive in the great scheme of things!

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada