If you've checked Twitter, updated your Facebook status and read an article or two at work today then here's a reason not to feel guilty: Periodical procrastination has been shown to boost work performance, especially if your job is particularly tedious. Say, if you're flying a spy drone over Pakistan.
These are the findings of a study to be published in the journal Interacting with Computers. Mary Cummings, director of the Humans and Automation Lab at MIT and author of the study, measured how productive and reactive participants were during a computer simulated exercise. Amazingly, she found that most of the subjects who came out on top were distracted for up to a third of the four-hour-long experiment.
The subjects were charged with simultaneously controlling four computer-simulated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were tasked with seeking out potential targets. When one of the UAVs identified a target it was up to the human to decide whether it was hostile or friendly. The UAV required a further command to shoot and destroy the target if it was deemed hostile. The more targets successfully eliminated, the more points awarded.
There's been a lingering debate in the UAV community about whether piloting drones over warzones leads to post-traumatic stress disorder. Certainly, it leads to an odd lifestyle. Pilots are unleashing Hellfire missiles one minute, and serving their daughter blueberry pancakes the next. But the biggest hazard, Cummings suggests, might be something entirely different: boredom. Because most of the time, drones stare down at nothing interesting at all.
Cummings video-recorded the experiment to keep tabs on when the participant was actually engaged with the exercise and when they were looking away from the computer screen.
The high achievers of the experiment were distracted for about 30 percent of the time, deciding instead to check their cell phones, grab a bite to eat or read a book. There was one exception who turned out to be highly focused and also amassed a large number of points ' but not significantly more than her procrastinating coworkers.
We've all had that coworker at some point, right? The one that somehow manages to subdue the temptation to veer off task and instead stubbornly chooses to stay mind-numbingly focused on the task at hand, leaving you with a lingering feeling of remorse and inadequacy when you inevitably check your Twitter feed. Well, here's some even more good news for you: it turns out you're a more conscientious person.
Cummings asked the participants to fill out a survey when they were done with the computer simulation. The results of which categorized them into one of five dominant personality traits. A commonality among the high achievers was conscientiousness, ahead of extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness.
Cummings hastens to add that the conscientious among us may better suited for slow paced jobs but that doesn't mean we'd be particularly skilled at controlling the military's UAV fleet. You need to be able to think on your feet and make a rapid decision about whether or not to launch a missile, says Cummings, something which conscientious people might take too long to do.
The study 'funded by the Office of Naval Research and the well-connected aviation firm Aurora Flight Sciences ' argues that 'banning radio listening and conversations or limiting breaks' contributes to boredom and won't create a productive work environment. It goes on to say 'organizational attempts to enforce a distraction-free or 'sterile' environment may only exacerbate negative consequences.' Over half of all U.S. companies have forbidden its employees from logging onto Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites ' something they might want to reconsider.
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