Mandatory Breaks in the Digital Age
I've been in school from what feels like birth to May 2007, during which I spent progressively more and more time staring at a computer screen. It's gotten so bad now that I get up, check the weather and listen to iTunes while getting ready, then go to work and sit at a computer for 7.5 hours each workday -and sometimes 8.5 if I surf the net during "lunch," which is often- then come home and read blogs and watch movies on my laptop until I fall asleep. I mean seriously, now that I've laid it all out like this, it's painful to realize.
Now that I work in an office setting, I see that the online procrastination techniques are rampant. I'd even venture to say that it's become part of our culture. But this realization has got me thinking about the nature of mandatory breaks in the digital age. Is it still necessary to mandate break periods, paid or unpaid, when so many of us spend time at work procrastinating online? How do we account for this, both on the individual and organizational levels? Do workplace ethics, or hell even human ethics, require that we address this phenomenon? And if so, how do we deal with it?
My search for answers began with -ironically and yet oh-so-typically- a Google search! During work! I looked up the mandatory break laws on the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment Standards Administration website at http://www.dol.gov/esa/. More specifically, we're looking their Wage & Hour Division program. I strongly recommend that anyone with a job visits this site to learn about your rights and the laws that govern your work. Like most things internet, it's easy to get lost in the maze of links to fascinating laws and exemptions. I learned that children employed by their parents and children employed as actors or performers are exempt from Child Labor laws, for example. Scary.
You can check you state's laws by visiting http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/state/meal.htm and viewing the map and chart "Minimum Length of Meal Period Required Under State Law For Adult Employees in Private Sector1 January 1, 2009." Unfortunately, this only provides data for 19 states plus Guam and Puerto Rico. What's up with that?! The state that I'm from (Florida), the state that I work in (Washington, DC...not really a state, but that's ok), and the state that I live in (Virginia) were not covered at all. Basically, you should probably visit your state's DOL website in order to determine the laws that apply to you.
Yet another internet search yielded results from a Psychology Today blog by Dr. Timothy Pychyl, an associate professor at Carleton University in Ottawa who studies procrastination1. Dr Pychyl cited a survey by Jennifer Lavoie, who found that over 50% of respondents said they frequently procrastinate on the internet, and that respondents say that 47% of their time online is spent procrastinating. Here's the kicker: internet procrastination is closely linked to stress relief. Yet ironically, procrastination can also cause stress by neglecting work or poorly allocating time to goofing off. Furthermore, procrastination correlates to negative emotions such as anger and depression. To me, this only corroborates my vicious-cycle thesis that procrastination begets procrastination.
Dr. Pychyl seems to agree. He goes on to explain that procrastination is rationalized by making a conscious decision to put off a task in favor of a small diversion. The internet offers speed, accessibility, and convenience. It's all too easy, both online and offline, to put off a task in favor of something else. As Lavoie hypothesizes, we tell ourselves we can manage our time well and thus deserve or can afford to partake in a little self-indulgence. We perceive time as short intervals that we can move about and manage as we please, and the conscious decision to procrastinate occurs when we rationalize that we can move our little chunks of time around to suit our desires. I guesstimate that this decision is accompanied by an ethical rationalization that we can do both and be simultaneously happy and productive.
Although I frequently "catch" my coworkers goofing off, the same can be said for me. So, how can we call each other out on our collective behavior? Ethically speaking, "everyone does it" is never a justification. The laws do not account for internet procrastination or consider that in their mandatory break requirements for employers. I propose that we do a better job of policing ourselves as individuals and communities. For example, I rarely take my hour-long mandated lunch break, because I know that my internet procrastination can easily account for that hour. Yet I still think that collective ownership and acknowledgement is required to overcome the problem. We should have an Internet Procrastinators Anonymous-style meeting where we all admit our problem and support each other in overcoming it.
In that spirit, my name is Elizabeth, and I'm an Internet Procrastinator.
- Pychyl, Timothy. http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/200803/ill-just-check-m.... March 30, 2008.
too.
