SmallBizResource Blog -- Productivity

Even Asleep, No Rest For the Weary

Posted by Gayle Kesten Monday, Jan 7, 2008, 02:27 PM ET

George Costanza, who I can still picture napping under his office desk in one of the later Seinfeld episodes, would have felt legitimized by the results of a new Staples survey of small businesses.

More than half of the 300 U.S. small-biz pros who were polled for the 2nd Annual Staples National Small-Business Survey said they dream about work. What’s more, 70 percent of those “sleepworkers” said they actually put their dream plans into real-business action.

Now that’s what I call working 24/7. You can imagine how George would have spun that.

Bigger picture, the Staples survey sought to find out why we’re all working so gosh-darn hard all the time. Want proof? A whopping 98 percent of small-business owners and managers who participated in the survey said they work during their time off--including nights, weekends and vacations--and nearly 54 percent expect to work even harder in 2008.

What’s harder than hard? I’ve been an editor and writer for 20 years, and the only word I can come up with for that is impossible.

Believe me, I know—there are never enough hours in the day to get everything accomplished. (Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents think so, too.) But I also know from personal experience that the law of diminishing returns applies to more than just economics.

Read on for more of the survey’s findings and interpretations. Please let me know your reaction, how you would have answered some of Staples’ more interesting questions, and if you, too, sleepwork.

Productivity