When working, anything can be a distraction. The drip of the kitchen tap, a chatty colleague, browsing for new office furniture online, reading the newspaper; according to Today Online, low productivity fuelled by distractions in the workplace is harming the recovery of the western economies.
1. Only those in the social media industry need to check Facebook every ten minutes, and even then it should be for their clients! The BBC published the figures that Facebook could be costing U.K businesses £130 per day over the 233 million hours of employee time spent monthly accessing personal Facebook accounts.
2. Focus is the key to a productive day. The internet is a vast and brilliant place where it’s easy to start off looking for cheap office furniture and end up watching funny Japanese cat videos or reading about the lesser-known sons of great leaders. A stop watch or alarm can help focus; set up an estimated time frame for the activity – say twenty minutes – and reassess focus and purpose when the alarm rings. This is particularly important towards the end of the day when focus typically wanes a little more easily.
3. Access (or lack of) can be a huge time waster. Tech digest, Mashable.com, cites more than two hours per day being the average a person spends trying to contact colleagues and access information. Cloud servers and IM accounts can boost antonymous information access and reduce the time taken to contact co-workers.