Comment by Ace17 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ace17 | Hacker News Reader

This way of tracking worker concentration raises a lot of questions, especially in an era where we are surrounded with stuff designed to grab our concentration.

What if access to social media is made impossible? What did the numbers look like when it didn't exist at all? What happens to the 44 minutes? Does the "productive time" get increased? Or does the "news checking time" gets increased instead to compensate?

What happens during a weeks a 2048-like / google-pacman game has just been released? Does the "productive time" goes down to the toilet? Should we consider ourselves fundamentally less productive, and reduce the official workday time to 1h during this period?

What if the underlying phenomenom actually is "1/8th of work time = news checking", instead of "1h of work time = news checking", as the article suggests?

Please let's not jump to conclusions too fast ; the reasons why we're not working 100% of our 8-hour workdays have almost nothing to do with the reasons why Ford workers weren't working 100% of their 16-hour workdays.

Indeed.

In context of mental jobs, like programming, I identify at least three things of wasting time:

- coping with stress (I find myself browsing HN when I'm stressed; whether or not it ultimately helps being less anxious after I close HN is debatable, but it helps for the moment)

- it's hard to get into the zone, and in the meantime, life goes on; especially in the presence of focus-destroying distractions (like open-plan offices), it's easy to think about and check up on non-job-related things in your life that are important

- I like my hot tea and snacks

The first two I can beat if I can get into flow (less external distractions help here - like being alone in a room with doors that close); as for the third, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna plug myself into IV for my boss.

> What if access to social media is made impossible? What did the numbers look like when it didn't exist at all? What happens to the 44 minutes? Does the "productive time" get increased? Or does the "news checking time" gets increased instead to compensate?

In the olden days, it was "newspaper time" instead of "Facebook time," so I'd guess the numbers would look similar.

I remember long ago, working on a security job to pay my studies (in France, so not for tuition but for everyday life).

I was on a semi public bus company, in charge of opening secured doors in the morning. The front hostess arrived and stated "Ah ! The newspaper ! It's the first task of the morning !"

Well, it was not, because she made her coffee first :-)

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