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Office Waste: Workers Kill 1.86 Hours A Day

suntimes.com — "I'd say in a given week I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual work," Peter tells a the consultants. Well, Peter, you're not alone. A new survey by Salary.com and America Online found the average U.S. worker fritters away 1.86 hours per 8-hour workday -- not including lunch and scheduled breaks.

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  • TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -3/+37Kill 1.86 hours on digg? hehe
    • scoot87, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23If this is from a survey, then you would probably think the number is higher than 1.86. Damn Price is Right clips!!!
    • kolobcreek, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18In France its like 5.2 of their 6 hour work day. Why do you think there are so many cafe's in Europe.
    • invader, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6i was about to say.. you could probably reach the same conclusion by taking a user's digg comments, multiply the number of characters in each post.. then use an average wpm to figure out how much time was spent actually typing the comments....
    • scoot87, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7So I guess this is another reason why comapnies outsource thier business to those foreign countries. Not only do they pay less, but also kill less time (probably cuz there is no Indian Digg site)
    • kingp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Ha!
      Where I work, that number isn't even close...
    • dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"Kill 1.86 hours on digg? hehe"

      I'm not sure the survey included me. If it did, I think I would've thrown the average to 5.4 hours a day.
    • Araya213, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14"So I guess this is another reason why comapnies outsource thier business to those foreign countries."

      Well, there's that and the whole pay below the poverty level thing.
    • elpayo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This research is way off. I'd say today I've done about 40 minutes of work.
    • transeunte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2> So I guess this is another reason why comapnies outsource thier business to those foreign countries.

      Actually, it has nothing to do with it. Nice try, though.
    • Wiggles2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes we do fritter away our work time, and good for us. We always hear about productivity always increasing, but does that mean we are benefitting from it? Do we get to work 50% fewer hours a week (for the same pay) for 50% increased productivity? Or rather do we get 50% more pay for 50% increased productivity? No, wages are stagnant and we seem to work longer hours each decade. So where does the extra money/productivity go? I'll leave it up to you to figure that one out.

      If I were an independent farmer in the 19th century and I increased my productivity, then I either would get to work less or sell more of my produce. That's the natural outcome. So, in conclusion, ***** them, I'm going to fritter away the hours gleefully!
  • jazzyfoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8If you're brave try the Firefox plugin "TimeTracker" (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1887/) to monitor how much time you really spend surfing the web while at work...

    BTW, I am definitely above average... I also fritter away more than 1.86 hours per 8-hour workday :)
    • Desolite, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8yeah... i'm much closer to peter's estimate, mmmmmk?
    • syberghost, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Not sure what good that will do, if a lot of your job involves tools and documentation that are web-based.
      • jcasares, on 11/04/2007, -0/+0You can blacklist your web based tools so they are not counted in Timetracker
    • Densetsu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The features include: "List 'work' sites that should not count"

      It won't help if you're Googling around for documentation and whatnot, but should help to nullify time spent on your corporate website.
    • ahawks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Thanks! I used this at my last job, but when I came to this company in May I forgot to install it.
    • Saracor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm far closer to the work 1.86 hours a day and waste the rest...but then I've worked hard to be able to waste this much time.
    • sudonim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Watch out. Next thing you know people could be getting fired for what they post in digg coments ;)
    • Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If it doesn't consider focus it does no good; I alt-tab back and forth all day and FF is always open somewhere in there.
    • jazzyfoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The timer only counts when Firefox has focus... There is also a "pause" button so you can control when the timer is running for those times when you have convinced yourself that you are using Digg for "research"...
  • viclopez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14sam here. id say close to 5, if not more.
    • ippersiel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Hi Sam :)

      I kill more than that too, but my job requires me to wait until something is broken to fix before I can do something. I'm sure lots of people fall under that category too:

      Firefighters, Ambulance Drivers, Call Center Reps, IT Tech Support, *Managers*, Day Care Clerks, Retail Clerks on a Summer Day.....
    • viclopez, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25oh god i mistyped "same" and i came back, saw my comment and freaked out and started thinking who "Sam" was :/

      Im retarded.
    • invader, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12lol @ the same/Sam confusion.. that was great!
    • DPyro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+110 points to Gryffindor on that one!
    • Striker840, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@tygerclaw: Same here, if things are running smooth I have nothing to do, I am only busy when something takes a dump since I am a Network Admin/Tech.
  • jasper976, on 10/12/2007, -3/+61.86 seems like a lowball
  • pepsiguy94, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3only 1.86 hours a day, i spend more time just on digg. i guess i am above average
  • warmonger48, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Nice thing is about my job, we only have to log 32.5 hours of actual work a week (or 6.25 hours a day). We estimate that roughly 8 hours a week (1.75 hours a day) will be lost no matter what.
    • naughtymonkey69, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1If work day > 2 hours = I waste 2 hours at least
    • Bokista, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I wish that more companies would start implementing the 6 hour work day. I'd feel more compelled to get everything done quickly with that kind of time crunch. Knowing that you're working for two hours less should be an incentive to work harder during that time. I suppose it comes down to whether people would be willing to take that kind of responsibility at the workplace.
  • dainbramage559, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I work as a clerk in a lawfirm. I'm up there with Peter. Perhaps 30minutes-1hr of real actual work is done. The rest is just waiting around for things to do. In the meantime, its Digg.
  • waynechng, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Project managers often factor a 2.2 hour unproductive time loss per day per worker into their project plans.
    • TimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I do...

      you can do it in MS project 2k3
    • Recluse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@waynechng

      Yeah if your project manager isn't a complete douche and moron.
    • GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So now we know exactly how much time to waste each day then ;).
  • tlogank, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ha, I am about right on with Peter, about 15 mins. a day of real work.
  • BobMysterioso, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4yea.. 6.81 for me today..


    no typo
  • Loie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8yeah, 1.86 is way too low.
  • TriZz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Does that also count the time spent on the weekends with Lumburg?
  • totorototoro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21.86 hours...a day???
  • hotbeefman, on 10/12/2007, -19/+1Digg mine too! http://digg.com/offbeat_news/Your_day_just_got_shorter_2_hour_min_slack_off
    • Phaedruss, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Sorry, I already spent my 1.86 hours on Digg today, I don't have time to Digg your submission.
  • kwilliam71, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4There's also something to be said for the moral of the worker that is allowed the flexibility to screw around that much. He's probably twice as productive cause he doesn't hate his job as much as the guy that works by the book and to the clock.
    • wordsofwisedumb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I have had jobs where I can screw around and personally I got kind of bored. I'm an architect and I really like doing architecture work. Putzing around on the internet is fun but it can get old compared to some of the design work you get to do as an architect.
  • welk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2no way do i spend more than 50% of my time actually working
  • Motocompo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I digg just because I know in my own office life the the title is true.
  • Massif, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The article makes it seem like non-working time is a bad thing. I take maybe 3-5 bathroom breaks every day, get up to stretch my legs every once in a while, and talk with my co-workers sometimes too. There's nothing wrong with "killing" time. That's what makes us human.
  • transeunte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Solution: reduce the 8 hours to 4.
    • viclopez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9dont forget also, if you cut the hours to 4, double our pay :D
    • Veamon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If you work four hours but still get paid for 8, then your pay IS doubled.
    • transeunte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, really. Working 8 hours a day leads to such a low-quality life that it should be deprecated by now.
  • schleufer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Pfft, what a bunch of slackers.

    I can easily waste 8 hours in an 8 hour day without even trying. I waste so much friggin time, it spills over into the following day. In fact, at this rate, I'll have to live to be 986 years old in order to make up for all the time I've frittered away.

    The Grim Reaper looks at me, and sighs.
  • imnotquitesure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5How much time are people spending looking for a new job while at work?
    • Striker840, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0cant do that where I work, we run a program called websense that filters out damn near anything. It we use it because of the type of place I work and the type of data that is on our network. I happen to be able to get to certain sites such as this because I an a nework admin/tech so I have a bit more access to the net.
  • starexplorer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10the beatings will continue until morale improves
    • Tabris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Aye, matey. My flag says that and it hangs above the doorway in my dorm. Good stuff.
  • julienbh, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I'd say as an IT. Tech based In Quebec, Canada, I work about 5-6hours a day instead of the 8 I should. Not a bad approx. I'd say.
    Like one guy said, my job is to wait for calls so I wait on digg :P
    • Striker840, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yep same here but I work even less on average. Unless we(I) am doing updates on software on our mobile terminals(read laptops) or something in house goes down I just digg and walk around checking things out.
  • jlgoolsbee, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3definitely above average here... in fact, i bet it's reverse for me... I think I spend 1.86 hours doing work, and the rest of the time on digg, etc.
  • ZeroVector, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1It has got to be at least 4 hours, not 1.86.
  • mrnonrespondo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Ever since I added Digg to my Google homepage, my productivity has gone down.
  • Derrelicte, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Yeah 1.86 hours a day is fairly low.

    At my temp job, I probably waste 1.86 hours per hour. That's right. I do so little at my job, that I defy all natural laws and make time just for the sole purpose of killing it.

    To waste time, I usually head over to the break room and drink coffee and water. I start my workday at 8:30, and by 9:30, my urine is literally clear for the rest of the day. It's very healthy, I think.

    I also play Tetris on my cell phone a lot. Yesterday I scored a sweet high game of 230 lines.

    It's not like I don't do work...I just have no work to actually do.

    But at $10.50/hr, it's a pretty sweet deal for a sophomore in college.

    Whelp, looks like I still have about an hour and 15 minutes to whittle away. Off to the break room I go.
    • viclopez, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3actually clear urine is healthy. dark yellow is not. 0_o
  • goettel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Don't know about my average. I do know that today, I came in about half an hour late, at about 9:30, and wasted away the day to about 16:30, doing some small things taking about 20m total. Because I have a deadline tomorrow, I actually stayed overtime about 30m. My regular workday is 9 hours, officially. In reality, I'm only there for about 7.5, because my boss is an easy going guy who doesn't really want to know.

    So, today I worked slightly less than 3 hours out of 9. Usually, I score much worse.

    The only part of slacking I really enjoy is talking ***** with my co-workers, which is easily more enjoyable than the average pub night. The rest is wasted away on the net.

    I make slightly over 2000 euro after taxes, for a four day work week of this. I'm on the government payroll. Rest assured, your tax euro's are spent on class food, fine booze and tons of grass.

    All true.
    • t928, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I had assumed you were from the states until you started talking about euros
  • chiptinder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3agreed, i spend around 2-2 1/2 hours out of 8 actually working.
  • gabeN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'm doing my best to drag that average up...
  • Ghostal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I read this survey as saying that the office wastes almost two hours of people's time per day.I can do my work fast and accurate. Many people "wasting time" probably do too. I should be able to go home, but I can't.

    Two extra hours at work is 728 hours a year you'll never get back. That's not even including the average commute time (which is rising) which is 90 minutes in the car round trip. There's another 360 hours gone per year. That's a grand total of 45 days lost to nonsense...or about 12% of your year.

    It's a happy life if you don't weaken.
    • Ghostal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If I enter in the American average of 15 days off per year...the time lost to nonsense goes down to 10% per year.
    • ejp1082, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This survey is kind of meaningless.

      Any time I spend on the net during the day, I wouldn't consider time wasted; in fact, I consider it pretty vital to my productivity. I need the downtime to recharge my batteries, and sometimes 10-15 minutes of letting myself be distracted is what I need to look at a problem a new way when I come back to it.

      On the other hand, what would I consider time wasted? Meetings. Conference calls. Paperwork. That's half my day wasted right there.

      The problem is we have a screwed up corporate culture that assumes time in office = productivity. Most officeworkers get rewarded for being there and looking busy. What's needed (and incidentally, what we have where I work) is task based metrics of productivity. I'm judged by how much and how well I get things done; once you have that the whole notion of "time wasted" vanishes.
  • skamper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I work 9.5 hours today. So far in the 4 hours I've been here I've done about 3 hours of surfing.
  • caselogic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4its about that when i first get in.. then about 30 minutes of work.. then lunch.. then about another 2 hours of nothing then 30 minutes of work... then go home early. damn you digg.
  • Ghostal, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I read this survey as saying that the office wastes almost two hours of people's time per day.I can do my work fast and accurate. Many people "wasting time" probably do too. I should be able to go home, but I can't.

    Two extra hours at work is 500 hours a year--minus vacation--you'll never get back. That's not even including the average commute time (which is rising) which is 90 minutes in the car round trip. There's another 360 hours gone per year. That's a grand total of 36 days lost to nonsense...or about 10% of your year.

    It's a happy life if you don't weaken.
  • dtfinch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's only what they'll admit to. And workers become substantially more productive when they think they're being monitored.

    Note: I'm posting this during my mandatory 15 minute afternoon break.
  • Mrkamikaze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Personally, working in IT it not a quantative type of work if it were I would have been burned out along time ago.. It’s not like having to dig ditches all day where you work the full eight hours. Besides I work smarter not harder which allows me some time to kick back and check out tech news ultimately making me more knowledgeable about what I do.
  • goettel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"And workers become substantially more productive when they think they're being monitored."

    Actually, what that does to me is sharpen my skills in dodging work. Did that for about a year on some job before they finally caught on. The pay wasn't so good, but that's still about 15000 euro I earned spacing out looking extremely busy and productive.

    Far from making me feel good, all the slacking makes me yearn for a job which would allow me to have some (small) positive influence on the whole mess which passes for real life in the West. Most are either grind jobs to buy your boss a Porche, or safe havens of people like me who create a complex web of slacking and budget spending.

    I went to Romania once. Farmers, prostitutes, small time crooks, struggling shop owners. That's life. What we call a job over here is just slow death with a paycheck.
  • wheel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4On one hand people complain about how bad their job sucks, and on the other they brag about how little work they actually do at their job. Humorous. I can't believe how many comments saying the exact same thing can be dugg up.
  • Sukino, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2You are cool and what not but don't whine about outsourcing.
  • goettel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Could we have some boss types comment about their evident gullibility? Would make a nice read tomorrow at work.
  • TimDigg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31.86 hours?...thats just lunch
  • patc6, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Who cares if a worker kill 1.86 hours a day! Regardless of how efficient or effective a person is at their job the business is still going to screw over the consumer as well as the employee. So go ahead everyone and kill those 1.86 hours a day in the name of your sanity!

    Live life! Don't let the corporation run it for you!
  • ictoan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1After reading this and then http://www.digg.com/offbeat_news/How_to_Get_Away_with_Doing_Nothing_at_Work
    My goal is going to kill 3 hrs of work a day now XD
  • margaritaville, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's sick how many hours are wasted at my company. Then people complain why the company is doing so badly on top of feeling that they are deserving of more than they get. In fact, they don't even work for all they do get. We are truly lazy Americans.
  • sclozza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I managed to waste 1.5 years procrastinating on even picking a topic for my honours at uni. I started yesterday, I feel dirty.
  • oskippyone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Only 1.86 hours per day? I'd argue a bit more is wasted..
  • bluto20, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I, myself, am one of these slackers.


    -edit- wrote this while getting paid ;)
  • sunshine07, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think the overwhelming agreement on this site with the findings from this survey suggests that there are ALOT of people who are completely UNDERUTILIZED at work, where their talents are being left on the table untapped, leaving their full potential unrealized. My experience has been that the smartest, most capable people are often the ones most likely to be ignored, because the people at the top are rarely smart enough to recognize talent and or know how to use it! From my experiences working in IT environments, I've noticed over and over again that certain skills are in demand at a given point in time while others are kept "in reserve" and used on an "as needed" basis. Wouldn't it be great if all those hours of downtime with nothing to do could be spent working on incubator projects like the kind at Google where small teams can cook up ideas that are floated to the top for review and if successful, receiving start up funding!
  • thekauf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0whoopty freaking doooo. 8 hours is a long time. Maybe they should just keep everyone chained in their chairs with their heads forced toward the monitor all day so they can only work.
  • endlessthinker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Workers need motivation to work, paying them poorly askes them to work slower. Too many jobs in this country pay just slightly above the standard of living; they forget to add that when they mention unemployment.
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