The Procrastination Economy. Ethan Tussey

      Introduction

      During the Second World War, factory owners responding to trends in industrial psychology devoted considerable time to identifying music that could make employees more productive. In 1937, the Industrial Health Research Board of Great Britain conducted a study in which the productivity of confectionary workers was measured against the temporal qualities of six different music genres.1 The researchers were looking for music that could alleviate the boredom of repetitive factory work and mitigate procrastination. The study showed that workers responded to a program of “familiar” and “simple” dance music that changed styles after no “less than one hour or more than two hours in each spell of work.”2 The study, and others like it, inspired employers, governments, and companies to compose music that could make their employees more productive.3

      The arrival of transistor radios a few years later gave individuals the ability to change their surroundings through the power of music. It was clear that music had a positive impact on the workplace, but could people be trusted to listen to the “right” kind of music to maximize productivity? In 1965, a New York Times editorial decried the noise and distraction that modern technologies had brought to the city and saved particular vitriol for the “cretins” who “lovingly hug their shrieking transistor radios with a look of rapt idiocy.”4 Mobile devices, whether transistor radios or smartphones, can reveal individual will and threaten institutional order because they offer agency in public spaces. Despite this disruptive potential, people find ways of integrating their mobile device use into the rhythms of their workday.

      The proliferation of Internet-connected mobile devices amplifies the issues raised by transistor radios. A 2013 Advertising Age report showed that people spend more time engaged with personal mobile devices than with any other media screen.5 According to the study, people most often use their devices to text, email, Internet browse, make calls, listen to music, play with apps, consult maps, and “check in” (sharing their location information).6 The centrality of these devices in our daily lives has raised concerns that the technology may be contributing to loneliness, arrested development, shortened attention spans, and declines in grammar, memory, and intimacy.7 These concerns focus on the functionality of the mobile technology and the time spent on the devices. Often missing from stories about mobile devices is the context of use, which media scholars such as Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy argue is essential to understanding media technologies.8 A 2015 Pew Research study showed that the top-five places for using smartphones were “at home” (99%), “in transit” (82%), “at work” (69%), “waiting in line” (53%), and “at a community place” (51%).9 The hours logged on mobile devices may seem egregious, but they become much more understandable when considered as an enhancement of existing behaviors in these specific contexts.

      For example, people such as Lee Ann Hiliker of Hobbs Herder Advertising in Santa Ana, California, have organized NCAA tournament office pools since the sporting event expanded to 64 teams in 1985.10 For Hiliker, the tournament provided a common topic of conversation and a chance to learn more about her coworkers and to brag about her alma mater, the University of Arizona. Office workers such as Hiliker and her colleagues predict the winner of each tournament game, and the entrant with the most correct predictions wins the pool. In 2006, CBS began offering a free streaming video broadcast of its NCAA tournament coverage, which allowed employees to watch games at their desks.11 The audience research firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas estimated that the event cost the nation’s economy billions of dollars in lost productivity.12 Major media outlets picked up on this figure and published stories about the dangers of watching the games at work. These alarmist reports ignored the fact that employees discussed the tournament, checked scores, or set up portable televisions to watch the tournament long before streaming video was a part of office culture.13 Furthermore, the numbers used in the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas estimate are only accurate if every person that reported to be a sports fan in the country decided to watch every second of every game at work.14 Such a scenario is highly improbable. The outrage and concern over workplace viewing focuses on the disruptive potential of the mobile devices