In my engineering career, I have always tried to be as productive as possible. That’s what we are taught as engineers – always optimize!
Recently I have been doing a lot of traveling for my Engineer Your Own Success (EYOS) book tour and it has helped me to realize how much the internet can really hamper your productivity. On a recent flight from the east to west coast, I was able to spend a solid 4 hours on my laptop and get so much accomplished. The main reason for this productivity was because there was no access to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or e-mail to pull me away from what I was doing.
I certainly may not be telling you something here that you weren’t already aware of as I know most of you have at one time or another experienced time loss due to participating in social media postings etc. I realized a while ago that while the Internet is an amazing source of information, it can really take your focus off of your main tasks for the day. I’ve known this for a long time myself, but I still struggle with refraining from being active on the Internet when I know with jut one click of my mouse I’m in. However, on the airplane, I knew I couldn’t get online, so my focus remained laser sharp on the tasks I was tackling and what a difference it made in the level of my work performance for that time period. I easily did in 4 hours what I normally would have accomplished in a full day at the office. [Read more…] about Warning: Too Much Internet Use May Reduce Your Productivity and Negatively Affect Your Work-Life Balance
