In a survey conducted by the executive staffing service Robert Half
International Inc., workers were asked how much time each day they
believed they spent doing personal tasks at the office. The mean
response was 36 minutes, while executives believed that employees spent
46 minutes.

…

There is another benefit to setting specific times to allow employees
to attend to personal business. Switching from work to personal tasks
intermittently eats into productivity in another way, said Dave
Crenshaw, a time management expert and author of "The Myth of
Multitasking."

"Whenever you switch your attention from one task
to another you incur a switching cost, the recovery time," he said. "If
I'm switching from doing business e-mail to doing personal shopping to
fantasy football, pretty soon I'm not getting anything done. The loss
of productivity is greater than just the time spent on the (nonwork)
activity."

…

http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2008/12/01/news/iq_25348892.txt

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