Don’t expect to get much done during the month of December.
With the holidays around the corner, workers spend about 1.7 hours of the day shopping online, according to a new study conducted by Finder.com.
Overall, more than half, or 57 percent, of employed Americans confessed to shopping while on the clock, the personal finance site said, totaling some 234 million hours a day browsing the internet. Finder polled over 2,000 adults in June.
“That’s a significant chunk of time people are not doing their job,” said Jennifer McDermott, Finder’s consumer advocate.
A separate survey by CareerBuilder similarly found that more than half of workers said they spend at least some work time holiday shopping online.
Deal hunting doesn’t stop there either, Finder found. The majority of employed Americans also admitted to browsing travel destinations while working, spending an average of 1.3 hours a day planning their next getaway.
Collectively, Americans spend an estimated 180 million hours a day searching for their next vacation.
To stay better focused on the task at hand, McDermott advises employees to shut off their internet connection altogether while they complete work on a project, then set a timer to take a break to browse online. McDermott suggests a shooting for a five-minute time limit.
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