You’re Less Productive in the Afternoon — Especially on Fridays

Most of us will know that feeling — our attention can drop off during the day and our efficient mornings can then blend into less efficient afternoons. And Friday afternoon? Well, you can write that off!

This feeling, or assumption, is now backed up by some science, and pretty solid science at that in a novel piece of research.

The research was conducted by a team around Drs. Taehyun Roh and Nishat Tasnim Hasan of the Texas A&M University. Much previous work has used self report studies or wearable technology for short periods of time — these can be invasive and in the case of self reporting very subjective.

In this study the researchers tracked a large group of workers (789) at an energy company in Texas over two full years making this an impressive real world dataset. What they found is that computer use and output increased to Wednesday (slightly only) and then dropped off until Friday.

What’s more, usage dropped off in the afternoon and also typos increased — a sign of fatigue and wavering attention. This was particularly bad on Friday afternoons — probably no surprise there — fatigue setting in not to mention the psychological impact of the looming weekend.