Wasting Time

This weekend brings the Super Bowl, that annual festival of traditions including overpriced commercials, seven-layer dip and a curious one for we business writers: statistics on how much productivity is "lost" due to the game. I've seen different numbers bandied about: Employers lose $820 or $850 ...

Employers need to stop blaming Facebook. At least if you believe the results of a new nationwide survey commissioned by TrackVia, the maker of a cloud-based application platform. The survey asked 300 workers to name their biggest time wasters. Only 5 percent respondents cited Facebook, Twitter or another ...

Many workers are eager to work from home, and more employers are accommodating them. But what do these workers actually do all day? Are they as productive as the rest of us toiling away in our cubicles? Well, maybe not. A recent survey asked work-from-home employees if they do non-work activities. Many ...

Several weeks ago, I had a realization: I was spending a lot of time deleting email. Every day, I seemed to get dozens of unwanted emails that I deleted unread. This wasn't pure spam. It was announcements from groups I was no longer part of, emails from companies I'd bought something from years ago, newsletters ...

It's no secret that American workers have allowed technology take a pernicious toll on their attention, and in turn, their creativity, resilience, relationships and, ultimately, productivity. But how do you take back your life? The key is to make conscious choices that provide long-term satisfaction rather than ...

Does anything bring together the workplace like the office pool during March Madness? The annual rite of the Sweet 16, Elite Eight and Final Four has a unique way of giving the American workplace a collective pastime as colleagues compete to fill out the most accurate bracket for the NCAA Men's Basketball ...

By Derene Brox It's a rare employee who isn't guilty of a little slacking off every now and then. A Facebook status update here, a little discussion of last night's 30 Rock there. And then there's the time spent shopping online for a gift for your mother's birthday, and the time spent on the phone dealing ...

I once had a job where, after four months in the office, I still couldn't pinpoint exactly what one person in my office did. She and I would be in the same meetings, but she didn't say or do anything that hinted at her professional purpose. Not once did we collaborate on a project, though we made polite ...