A lot of people chimed in and said [paraphrased] “I have a lot of down time at my job - that’s when I surf the net.”
What I wanna know is if you felt like you did more work at your job before the Internet showed up on your desk.
I’ll go first:
Yeah, I’d have to say that back when I worked out of the house, I did more work related stuff at work before I had the Internet to play with. I remember when e-mail showed up on my desktop, and I thought THAT was a big distraction. I could yak with friends all day! And I looked like I was working!
I remember getting tons of crap done, simply because I was chained to a desk and there was nothing else to do. Later on, if there wasn’t urgent business, stuff that had to be done NOW, I’ll screw around on the Internet. Back then, I’d take up stuff that I hadn’t had time to do otherwise - organize files, check up on that pesky issue that I’d been putting off, etc. etc.
Of course, nowadays it’s a moot point - I work out the house, for myself. I can surf all day if I want, but that doesn’t bring in a paycheck. Rather motivating, that.
When I started at my company 6 years ago I was the only person in our entire company to have internet access because there were certain job duties that could only be performed via the internet… checking peoples MVR for example. I really didn’t play on the internet much for the first six months I was here. That’s because I was busy cleaning up files and stuff that the person before me had fuc*ed up! Once I got that done I had a lot more down time and started playing around on the internet.
I rarely use my internet at home. Sometimes I wonder why I eve have it at home if I only use it 2-3 times a month!
I do a lot more work now, because of the internet; I’m in a small, but very broad support and development role (I do everything including building, installing, supporting PCs, networks etc and I develop stock control and analysis applications) - there are so many aspects to this that I can’t possibly know them all and the web is a fantastic research tool for troubleshooting and advice. I couldn’t do half the work I do without it.
Well, I did a lot more pointless running around, looking up answers to medical dilemmas. Often having to paw thru journals, my bookshelf, the shelves of my colleagues, etc.
Now I just go online and find what I need quickly. It streamlines things.