Besides being a four-letter word, that is. What do you actually do in the office?

Not a lot, it would seem. There are some interesting numbers in that NY Times article, like US workers spending on average 45 hours a week at work, of which 16 are non-productive. That figure's probably on the low side if you ask me - it should take into account commuting which, while being a necessary evil, probably adds at least an hour or maybe two to people's working days.

I'm not sure Steve Pavlina, the "perhaps the most intensely growth-oriented individual you will ever meet" is right about people putting in only one and a half hours worth of work each day, but can vouch for the vast majority of meeting I've attended having been a waste of time. Meetings are usually called by management so that they can write (or get someone else to write) a report that makes them look like they've done something. They're also used to bully staff who may be busy doing something actually productive - it shows underlings who's the top dog that can call a meeting no matter how trivial the subject.

Meetings are the main reason management in general oppose telecommuting workers - an office devoid of salary slaves to haul into meetings would give managers cold turkey. Doesn't matter that the majority of tasks can be done from wherever more productively, and just about everything talked about in meetings can be handled via Instant Messaging for instance.

In that kind of environment, where you're pressured to be put in face time instead of being measured on what you come up with, it's no wonder that people slack off on the Internet for instance. Trade Me is, I hear, New Zealand's biggest "productivity killer" but the fix for that isn't to make the working environment less dull and soul-destroying, but to remove access to "distractions".

Think about that for a while, and count the number of hours you're chained to your desk every week and you'll see how wrong the whole thing is. No amount of productivity surveys will help until that fundamental problem is solved.