Here are the things that are killing your productivity
There’s a brand-new study out from CareerBuilder.com that suggests that most of us, despite our best intentions, are actually super-unproductive every single day. The website polled Internet users about what distracts them at work, and 44% blamed the Internet, with 36% specifically blaming social media. And to that we say: yes, duh.
OF COURSE the Internet, and specifically social media, is killing what we accomplish between 9am and 5pm. This is nothing new. In the past 24 hours alone I have been very invested in a Twitter conversation that Chris Pratt and Anna Faris are having about dinosaurs. It has made my productivity drop by at least 50%.
The Internet is a distracting place, but the culprit isn’t just social media. Let me apologize in advance for how distracted we’re going to be for the rest of the day, but I’ve made a list of some other things that I suspect are ruining our productivity and derailing us for hours on end.
Baby animal life-feeds
The subject line of the email from your mom reads, “omg, cute.” Inside, a link to a link to Animal Planet’s live-feeds. Do you want to watch puppies, kittens, sloths, bunnies, an African water hole or a tarantula in real-time? The answer is yes.
Getting sucked into an online sale
My Achilles heel is anything that reads, “flash sale.” OMG, what? OK, breathe. Just spend a few minutes browsing around the site, and then realize you need this and that and two of these, and suddenly your cart is full and your wallet is empty. And it’s four hours later. By the way, J.Crew has 30-40% off today.
Any new website that requires users to make a detailed profile
It’s like when you used to play The Sims, and all you wanted to do was build the houses. Sometimes the best part of singing up for a new website or service is just filling in all the personal questions. For anything that’s going to be specifically tailored to you, they’ll be questions like, what’s your favorite season? Color? Smell? All of these questions have to be answered with great detail.
The pictures of a mutual friend on Facebook/Instagram
For a few seconds you stop working, and check one of these social media sites to see that a friend of a friend has left a comment on a picture you’re in. So you click their name. Then, you look at all their pictures. All 400 pictures going back five years. So much scrolling. So hard to not accidentally click “like” on something from 2011. You’ve also fallen so far into this time capsule that you don’t want to come out until you’ve seen everything.
You think you’re just going to sign up, get sorted into a house, and be done with it. Oh, but you are wrong. Soon, you’ve got to see how many house points you can snag, and how many secret corners of the site you can unlock.
Old Reddit threads
There’s a link to an article about something Mindy Kaling said in a Reddit AMA thread from three years ago. You click it. That brings you down into a deep Reddit hole, where you have to read through the entire thread, and find every question and answer that Kaling gave. It’s full of juicy information and jokes. Then you’ve got to find another one of these, and read it all the way through, too.
Pictures of food on Pinterest
Don’t you want to know how to make that birthday cake pretzel dip with rainbow sprinkles? If you don’t click on the picture, you won’t know. But you have to click because that birthday cake pretzel dip with rainbow sprinkles looks so good, and you have to know how to make it right this instant, even though you’re at the office and there’s no way to get a cake mid middle of the day.
’90s Music Videos
Curse the YouTube side bar that suggests other videos you should watch, too. It can see that you’re watching Backstreet Boy’s “Larger Than Life” video, so it suggest you watch “Everybody.” Then you start watching NSYNC, and Britney, and Christina, and then you come across Destiny’s Child and there’s no turning back.
Image via here.
