I'm sure we've all engaged in a bit of cyberloafing.  In our social media age this is often spent on sites like Facebook, but it can equally be regarded as any activity that isn't really related to our job.  Now research suggests that this activity is not bad in itself because none of us will be on for the full 8 hours of every working day, so a bit of time 'loafing' is often good to help our brain recharge.  So this article isn't about whether cyberloafing in itself is good or bad.  Instead it's about some new research that explores when we are more inclined to loaf.

The research suggests that sleep could be the trigger, or more accurately a lack of sleep.  The research team trawled through Google search data to see when we typically search for entertainment related things (this being a good enough example of cyberloafing).  Obviously the Google data is anonymous so it's not all that easy to correlate searches with the searchers state of alertness.

What they did however was utilise the shift when we put the clicks forward for Daylight Saving Time.  They reasoned that this simple event usually makes us a bit more tired, as research suggests we typically lose 40 minutes of sleep on average the night after the switch as our bodies adapt.

So far so good.  The team discovered that entertainment related searches the day after the clocks go forward were 3.1% higher than on the same day the week before, and a full 6.4% higher than after our bodies had had a week to adapt to the new time.

Interesting stuff.  They conducted a second experiment to test this idea further.  This time they fitted participants with a sleep monitoring bracelet before they were asked to attend the lab to assess a potential new professor by watching him a video of him lecturing for 40 minutes.

They weren't really that interested in their opinion of the professor but how much time they'd spend browsing the web instead of doing what they were asked.  What they found was that participants who had a bad nights sleep (or simply not enough), and were therefore tired, were much more likely to cyberloaf.

There has been lots of research on the impact of sleep on our productivity, whilst a similar array of studies have revealed the importance of rest for our ability to self-regulate our behaviour.  In other words when we're tired, our will power is much lower and therefore we're much more likely to do bad things.

Now it should be said that participants in the study that had scored highly on a self discipline test taken beforehand did not succumb to cyberloafing, even when they were tired, so it's clear that strong will power is enough to overcome this, but the weaker amongst us are liable to fall fowl of a bit of cyberloafing when our energy levels drop.

With news yesterday that an increasing number of companies are allowing social media access whilst at work, this maybe something for managers to consider.