How much is too much? Internet Use in the workplace
FaceBook? Are you kidding me? Who’s got time for that?
Let’s get real. Using official Facebook statistics (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics), over 100 million users login to Facebook every day . Over 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day. This means an average user spends 35 minutes on Facebook, before logging off. It’s not going away. Plenty of people are making time for it.
……”LinkedIn and websites and blogs, oh my”……..Absolute musts for most business and business person, no argument. (Thank God for the IT Department) And then there are Avatars, YouTube and games, oh wow! We can really escape in this stuff. It’s good to know what’s new in CyberSpace. And we really ought to have some “sandbox” time in our schedule to explore, get with pop culture, and make sure we don’t become dinosaurs. But how much time is enough? How much is too much? And where is the best place to spend it? In an ever changing Internet world, how do we know where to invest our time? We don’t, really.
How do we keep a handle on our work productivity when our employees have to be on the Internet to do their work, and we don’t know what they’re doing?
Here’s the mirror question: Have you, as the leader, created a culture of engagement, where your team is enthusiastically in your boat, rowing, to win the race, and take the trophy? Or have you created a culture of disengagement, where your team would rather be looking for distractions, drama, and the “drug” of what’s on the Internet?
It kind of reminds me of when I was young and my sister and I would be watching a zombie movie at 2 in the afternoon on a beautiful summer day, and my mom would scream “Turn that crap off and go outside and get some fresh air and exercise!”
What it really is: Distractions and drama and drugs, oh my. Whaddya mean drugs? I don’t do drugs. No? Let’s hold the mirror up really closely and look in for a moment. Dare to indulge me just a moment. There are times when we’ve had enough, doggone it. That last board meeting made me want to put my fist through a wall. My executive assistant really blew it today with a prospective hiree on the phone. I am tempted to kill my own son after seeing his report card. These are things I hear all the time. Welcome to the human race. You have emotions; frustration, anger, irritation,
Avoiding the inevitable……? What happened to Brian Tracy and “Eat That Frog?” I’d rather check my inbox (which now includes my inbox at Outlook, Plaxo, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, for starters). Even the most disciplined person can be distracted by the inbox for hours at a time.
I don’t know about you, but I have been finding it more and more difficult to focus on what I really need to get done in a day than ever before. Of course I am old enough to remember having this same issue come up with incoming phone calls, and incoming snail mail (remember taming the paper tiger and batching your phone calls, etc)
If you find you have less and less time each day to deal with what’s important, you need to look at your schedule. First of all, you need to have one. If you have one, you need to follow it.
If you don’t know where to start, do this great, eye-opening exercise: track where your time is spent every day for 2 weeks, in 15-minute increments. The third week, set aside a half day to review your results, look at them honestly, and establish (or re-write your existing) a new schedule.
Remember to determine what % of your activities are important and what % could be delegated, deferred, reduced, eliminated, etc.
Hopefully you were able to follow my writing in the blog entry; I realize I kind of went all over the place before I got to the point, but I don’t have time to go back and edit it. I have to check to see who’s on FaceBook!
Coach Julia
Tags: FaceBook, Inbox, Sandbox time, Social Networking, Twitter
