How Much Time at Work is Spent on Personal Matters?

Here's an interesting work/life question:

How much time at work is spent on personal matters?

Many organizations have a stated policy on what personal (non-work related) phone calls, web surfing, long lunches, and so on can be taken on work time, but my experience is that most employees ignore these policies.

Personally, I try to at least balance out the time I spend on personal tasks with the extra hours I work. I get in early, often work through lunch, and regularly answer emails on the weekends (with my Blackberry). And so I try not to spend any more time on personal efforts than what I accumulate in these "extra hours" efforts. For bigger personal tasks (such as being gone a couple hours for a doctors appointment), we have a pool of personal hours we can draw from.

What about you? How do you handle personal tasks/time during work hours?

Comments

[tom]

Is "too much" a correct answer?

I obsessively check Google Reader during my down time, looks like I need more work to do...

[Jason]

Yeah, I have to also say I spend way too much personal time doing work as well. I think it balances out.

[Dana]

I am so bored at work that I spend a lot of time doing personal things. I am looking for a new job that challenges me more.

[guinness416]

It's give and take, in my opinion. It's understood that I have to give up weekends and evenings to meet deadlines, to cover business development tasks and to travel for the firm, and they have to understand that I have a life/responsibilities outside of the office and that I'm half of a dink couple. We're all professionals, not children, so I don't "track" how much time I'm spending on personal stuff and they don't bother me about it.

[Todd]

Just curious...how many of us are at work spending time on the personal matter of reading FMF? C'mon. Show of hands?

Seriously, I was getting pretty bad about this. We had a slowdown this summer and instead of taking any initiative, I read the web. In an effort to improve my performance I am now doing the Lego time tracking method. When I do work, I add a brick to my day. A 4X2 is an hour so if i just spend 15 minutes, I use a 1X2. It is pretty cool to see my stack grow tall with doing actual work..then again, while I type this...nothing is being added. Back to work.

[a]

My choice is "as much as possible so long as I get my work done." Sometimes it can get boring if its a slow day. But that's a heck of a lot better than some jobs I worked where I was on my feet for 12 hours a day with a never ending work load.

["Mo" Money]

Isn't doing personal work while being paid by the company the same as stealing their pencils?

[Lauren]

Considering I'm reading this while at work, just booked an appointment with the vet, and am researching dentists in the area (inspired by a previous post), I obviously am one who does a lot of personal stuff during work... But I never, ever am late with deadlines and I get all my work done. My job can either be extremely busy or extremely slow, and it's slow more often than not.

[WiseMoneyMatters]

I think it depends on the job. One day per week, I'm forced to be the secretary because the secretary is gone (actually I'm usually the only one in the office that day). I could be doing other things, but that would mean the phones don't get answered which is very important to my boss. So instead, I sit at my desk, surf the web, work on my blog, chat on Facebook, etc. But in reality there is not a whole lot I could be doing that's more productive than this.

Now on the other days that I work, I usually spend about one hour worth of personal time instead of working. I also tend to work five 9-10 hour days and a 5 hour day each week. Since I'm on salary, it's not like I'm getting paid extra, so it still works out.

[Matt]

I do the same thing as you - I try to balance it out with extra effort. For the most part I think it balances out but when it doesn't (and that goes both ways with extra work and extra personal stuff) I know that it will balance it out in the end. I just have to make sure that my performance is up to snuff or the extra stuff has to go.

[Heidi]

I haven't been doing nearly as much personal stuff lately - I'm swamped at work (hence my commenting on blogs has seriously tapered off).

This week I've been spending work time doing wedding-planning stuff - but only because of my vendors' hours of operation. I've also been pulling 11-14 hour days for the past month or so, so I think it balances out.

[LotharBot]

I work hourly. If I'm doing personal stuff, I'm either off the clock, or in a "sit at this desk and answer questions" position.

[Ryan Waggoner]

Most organizations are far too interested in their employees' input, rather than their output. I think the biggest reason for that is that most companies lack a way to correlate an individual employee's efforts to revenues or profits, so the best they can do is measure the time you spend sitting at your desk. Horribly inefficient. This is a huge part of why I prefer freelancing or running my own startup.

[Rhea]

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. I hate capitalism, I hate the concept of work, I don't enjoy being trapped every day in an office. And if I want to do personal stuff at work, screw 'em!!

[Al]

Personal stuff at work? Nearly all day. I (by design) got a cushy governmental job in Quality Management (a true BS job!) I used to be in sales and was on contact with govenrmental agencies during sales talks and I notice nobody in government seemed to work hard....or even work! So I figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! No I got a Defined Benefit pension that'll pay me 50% of my salary after working 10 years, every obscure holiday in the world off and lots of vacation time. And if I work more than 2 hours a day, its a busy day. What's not to like?

[Jim]

To Rhea, who "hates capitalism" and "hates the concept of work": Do you also hate the paycheck that you are at least partially stealing from your employer? I didn't think so.