to take my 'downtime' during work hours?

[wishfortime]

By 'downtime' I mean nice easy things, like online shopping, coffee breaks, and a bit of random internet surfing.

I work full time and have a 90 minute standing/rushed commute.

Mornings are a rush with early start and nursery drop off etc, My DH picks up DC from nursery between 6 and 6.30 pm, and i reach home about 7pm, spend an hour doing bath, bedtime routine with DC while my husband cooks, we eat at 8.30 then its cleaning kitchen, laundry and general housework, and getting sorted for next day while my DH catches up on work emails. Weekends are also quite jam packed as both our families live far away, so more often than not we either are travelling 300 miles (at least once/twice a month), or family/friends are staying with us.

So I don't get any 'free time' at home, hence i feel i need to take some 'down time' at work. My workload isn't always 100% capacity, but its the type of job where i need to be there and available or it impacts the team. Its paid well and often things kick off i do need to work late into the evening, and sometimes at weekends from home. (I don't get paid for this 'overtime', which is how i justify to myself that the downtime at quieter times during the day is ok).

But is it not also true that many people believe themselves to be doing a good job, whilst their bosses think they're performing averagely?

Only if there is shit management happening.

Which, see my earlier comment.

It’s a well known fact that people are not 100% productive 100% of the time. We are t robots after all even working in healthcare I notice natural down points in the day. I quite often put the kettle on during this time, make everyone a drink and we all have a 10-20 minute chat. Some go on Facebook to say hi to partners/families, working in such a hostile environment with no access to your mobile for 14 hours means I don’t mind that as long as people don’t take the piss. I KNOW who pulls their weight and who doesnt. Stopping for a coffee from time to time seems to improve productivity, not ruin it.

OP an hour a day in a 8 hour day not including your lunch break is about right. Others may not notice they do it as they don’t utilise the time like you, but rest assured that most do.

This article is very interesting and it’s one of the reasons I schedule more complex work for the morning, and encourage a tea break at around 15:30

hbr.org/2015/01/the-ideal-work-schedule-as-determined-by-circadian-rhythms

If you are not scheduling it in/expecting it daily and are able to do it discretely without it impacting on your productivity then go for it.

What I do object to though is people (some of my colleagues) sitting surfing the net when everyone else is run ragged and there are tons of jobs to be done. Gives me the rage

I think if you're getting all your work done to a good standard then go for it. Think yourself lucky you've got a job that allows you to do it and then relax away for a bit every day.
An ex's dad who had a very successful career said he used to work hard all morning then take time in the afternoon to have a coffee with people and network a bit as those good relationships really helped in getting good results. Which I know isn't the same as you but the point is you don't have to be 100% all the time to be successful.
Maybe if you were a teacher or something and you let the kids run riot for an hour or two, but you're clearly not. Some people are just more efficient and should reap the benefits of that.

It sounds like you are stressed and it's your way of coping with hectic life. I would take your full lunch break which legally you normally need to be able to leave the premises for it to count but get out go for a walk, time yourself to have 10 minutes dedicated internet/ phone time or organising. Also making sure you eat as it maybe to do with energy levels dropping and focus going. You need time away from screen too.

Maybe missing the point here, but there seems to be a work/life balance issue here - not with the OP but with the DC. In nursery from 8-6 every day, weekends either spent on long car journeys or with visitors. Doesn’t sound like there is much opportunity to just kick leaves in the woods with mum and dad.

YABVU. Your employer is not paying you to be on the internet. I only get a half an hour lunch break but I do my me stuff then.
My DS is in bed now, so I'm on downtime now. I have a late dinner, anyway

Chatham, i agree - one of the most workaholic and productive people I've ever known (think top of a very big arts organisation) always made time to make people feel happy, whether that was a friendly catch-up email, or passing the time of day with front of house staff. Some of it would've come under what people on here are calling the 'faffing' heading. Except that it made him both universally loved and massively professionally successful. Don't see your work too narrowly, all the people with their heads always down are ironically perhaps quite likely not to be making and sustaining the relationships they need for professional success. Not quite the same as surfing mumsnet, but you get the drift.

We have strict guidance at work about accessing the internet for personal use during working hours (lunch hour is ok). Presumably you don’t have anything like this. If something was to crop up during your ‘downtime’ would you resume working or let things wait until you’ve finished what you’re looking at?

In nursery from 8-6 every day, weekends either spent on long car journeys or with visitors. Doesn’t sound like there is much opportunity to just kick leaves in the woods with mum and dad.

Family is important to us. DC get plenty of time to ‘kick leaves in the woods’ at weekends, if we are visiting our hometowns it means grandparents can tag along too if they wish. The drives are late Friday night and late Sunday night while DC are fast asleep in car seats. They are used to it as have done it since birth.

Is the unpaid time in your contract.

Yes contract says basically says office hours plus whatever hours are required and you won’t be paid for additional hours.

My colleague did this, as did everyone. We frequently worked through lunch and did tonnes of unpaid overtime so everybody had to do a bit of "life management" at work as we were never not there within office hours.

then said colleague fell out with our manager, and was reported to HR and fired for doing personal (not illegal or porn) stuff on work computers.

Lots of managers tolerate this as it's tit for tat if you're making sacrifices at work but beware! It gives them an easy way to downsize without paying redundancies if the mood changes in the future!

Ecureuil - "Obviously not everyone does the same job as you, RunYouJuiceBitch."

adopts OTT huffy voice<

Clearly not!

If you are going to do personal internet stuff at work, and I do understand why in some jobs you may need to, take your personal tablet/laptop/smartphone to work and use that.

Using work computers can be used against you in th e

My work internet policy specifically allows 'reasonable personal use' and I know for a fact that it's not monitored. We're encouraged to create and maintain (during working hours) professional social media presences. It's becoming more and more the norm.

This is not something we would ever allow at my workplace and we have a really clear internet use policy as we have lots of problems with staff not knowing what 'reasonable internet use' is. However, I can see where it would be acceptable in some workplaces, although I think it's pretty unprofessional to take hours of paid downtime unless you have literally no tasks left to complete (not just urgent ones).

The biggest issue I can see is that it would be a complete nightmare to manage from your boss' point of view. Do you ensure you balance out your downtime and overtime over a week, month, year? Are you recording this anywhere, is your boss monitoring or checking it? How do you know you aren't taking more downtime than you have done unpaid overtime over a year? What if a colleague started to have productivity issues and too much downtime was cited as a reason, how could your boss possibly mange this when everyone in the office is following some kind of informal policy on taking time off during their working day?

And as others have said, if for any reason your boss had other concerns about your work (and some people definitely are deluded about their performance at work despite regular feedback, not that I'm suggesting this is the case for you), they may do an audit on your internet use and use it in a case agaisnt you. I would only be happy doing this personally if their was a cast-iron policy covering it or I had written permission from my boss. Yes you could go and chat to a collague for an hour for downtime instead but their would be no way of auditing this after the fact.

I work in a similar environment. It's fine. It's what everyone else is doing too and the only people pissed off are the ones that walk in at 9 and out at 5.

Before now I've been quite open about the fact that I was going to be late back from lunch as I needed to do some xmas shopping. No one important batted an eyelid because they knew there was no other opportunity to do it.

But it's only fine because you work irregular long hours though.

You are not by any chance a nurse on a childrens ward in a London teaching hospital? My god daughter was an in patient for a week recently. To find a nurse, someone who wasn't on a drip had to find a nurse and politely request their attention. I could see the Tesco on.line shopping screen behind the nurse who reminded me that I was there outside of visiting hours and she was busy.
.You are taking the liss.

Cowbag I'm glad you're not my manager. At my organisation we foster a culture of trust. We believe in treating people like adults - if employees are trusted to manage their own workload and make their own decisions, they'll be more engaged, therefore more productive.

Of course, there are always exceptions, but these are managed through the usual performance management processes. We don't apply policies to everyone just because of the behaviour of the lowest common denominator. Consequently our engagement scores are at 79% which is pretty high.

Scarriff - I’m not a nurse, if I were I agree I would definitely bu as I believe nurses are paid for any overtime/or get TOIL. So there is no balancing out of downtime with overtime

* Scarriff - I’m not a nurse, if I were I agree I would definitely bu as I believe nurses are paid for any overtime/or get TOIL. So there is no balancing out of downtime with overtime*

You are joking right? I do on average an hours unpaid overtime each day...

* Scarriff - I’m not a nurse, if I were I agree I would definitely bu as I believe nurses are paid for any overtime/or get TOIL. So there is no balancing out of downtime with overtime

You are joking right? I do on average an hours unpaid overtime each day...*

Ah sorry if i misunderstood - does your contract state that your will work whatever additional hours are required, without pay, with no upper limit? - as mine does?

All this talk about productivity and people needing breaks to be more productive.... I'm not convinced it's much of a break from sitting down staring at a computer screen to then sit at the same desk stating at the Internet.
But I'm the opposite.... appointments and operations booked all day with barely time to sit down or go for a wee, no lunch break, staying late to phone with blood results etc and the occasional after hours emergency. Plus all the usual home/kids stuff.

On the otherhand, I live in crocs, my house isn't the tidiest and I've done most of my Christmas shopping on ocado.

What even is this downtime you speak of?