Dear J.T. & Dale: I have a secret: I don’t really work an eight-hour day, even though my company pays me for one. I can get away with spending hours on the Internet. I tried not to do this, but my job is just too boring. I’m worried my boss will eventually figure out how much time I spend on personal stuff (like checking my Facebook account) and I’ll get fired. Any suggestions? — Dominic
J.T.: You are not alone. In her book “Distracted,” Maggie Jackson discusses technology’s impact on our lives, including a study showing that personal distractions — like checking e-mail, instant messaging, clicking on YouTube and checking out Facebook — take up as much as one-quarter of the average cubicle dweller’s day. While your boss may not be aware of how much this is affecting productivity, Corporate America sure is. Estimates put the dollar value of interruptions in workers’ days as high as $650 billion. So, count on some “attention-getting” technology being implemented soon.
Dale:When I read your message, Dominic, my first thought was “perfect!” I say that because being underemployed makes it far easier to become a star employee, the sort who gets to work on engaging projects. First, let me back up and say that if you were to go to your boss and confide that you are finding yourself with free time, your boss would be faced with a nasty decision: either get rid of you as an unnecessary expense, or dump additional boring work on you. So, one of the first rules of being a corporate star is to never admit to having free time. Instead, you must take it upon yourself to find interesting work. For instance, early in my career, I was working for a big company as a market research analyst, bored and underemployed. The one part of my job that I found fascinating was advertising testing. I started experimenting with ways to make the ad tests more useful. Not only was I doing work I enjoyed, but I soon got hired away by an ad testing consulting firm.
J.T.: Ironically, you start to overcome boredom by learning to manage your distractions. For instance, try limiting the number of times a day you check e-mail. You’ll free up time, which you can leverage to become a winner in more ways than one.
