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I'm frequently on the net at work...I take all my breaks at my desk, but I still do work while on "break," so every so often, I'll read a news story on MSN or check my home e-mail for 5 minutes. It helps keep me sane. At lunch, I'll take a half hour or so and come here or check out some other "fun" sites. Lately I've been doing a lot of research on the net and the pages load sooooo slowly, so while I'm waiting, I'll read some news or write an e-mail and then go right back to the research. I still manage to get all my work done either on time or early, and my performance doesn't suffer. In fact, it's probably better than it would be if I worked 8 hours straight and didn't give my brain a break.
Someone recently did a study about internet usage at work, and they found that, while employees with unrestricted net access do spend more time surfing for personal reasons at work, they also take more work home and end up more productive in the long run. I fully believe that if you let people work at their own pace - even if they have to take a few breaks during the day - if they're performing at or above their expected level and getting everything done on time, who cares if they're looking at CNN.com a few times a day? Porn, gambling, etc. is an entirely different matter, but I don't see that surfing the web occasionally is any worse than the people who take 5 smoke breaks a day.
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