Irrelevant Web browsing now has a name: “wilfing,” as in “What Was I Looking For?” Meanwhile, Internet “addiction” is a growing concern to some. Plus, there’s the very real threat of e-mail overload. How much Internet is too much, and what can we do about online productivity killers?

Say you’re searching online for reviews of the latest version your favorite tech device to help you determine whether you should upgrade, when you stumble across an article about purchasing mobile devices at a satirical tech-news site. You then lose two hours surfing other silly stories there.

This would likely fall under the recently coined terminology “wilfing” — as in, “What Was I Looking For?”

The issue at hand, according to a recent poll by polling company YouGov, is that “people are wasting two days a month at work doing it,” notes The Christian Science Monitor. The British firm, which polled more than 2,400 British adults, determined that “two-thirds of Britain’s 33.7 million Internet users waste time surfing online at work and at home. And one-quarter of those time wasters spend as much as 33 percent of their time doing it.”

The worst offenders: men. And those aged 25 and under were three times as likely to “wilf” away the hours as those 55+.

Adding all this time “wilfing” to the legitimate time spent on the Web for work, is there such a thing as too much time online?

Addiction
In addition to the inability to focus on the task at hand, apparently some people cannot detach from Web surfing and online games. Does “addiction” overstate the issue? Possibly. Nonetheless, increasingly more countries in recent years have been addressing Internet addiction.

In fact, Yahoo! Tech actually lists some “symptoms” to watch out for:

1. Lying about how much time is spent online;

2. A general decrease of physical activity and social life;

3. Neglecting obligations at home, work or school to spend time online;

4. Spending too much money on computer equipment and Internet activities;

5. Feeling a constant desire to be online when they’re away from the computer;

6. Going online to escape real world problems;

7. Disregarding the emotional or physical consequences of being in front of a computer all day; and

8. Denial of the problem.

Heading over to the Center of Internet Addiction Recovery, on the Web (of course) at NetAddiction.com, you can actually complete a 20-item questionnaire to find out if, and how much, Internet usage is causing problems in your life. The center also offers counseling service to help the “afflicted.” Dr. Kimberly Young, who developed the Internet Addiction Test, estimates approximately five to 10 percent of the population suffer from Internet addiction.

The E-mail Menace
Beyond “wilfing” and addiction, threats to productivity often come in the form of excessive e-mail. This can be a highly irritating annoyance at best and, at worst, a true menace. Moreover, perhaps more often than not, e-mail today leads recipients to the Web.

As with any addiction (including Internet addiction, presumably), e-mail use can become an obsessive behavior. Recently, Slate interviewed life coach Marsha Egan, who “sets her e-mail program to check for new mail every 90 minutes, calling e-mail ‘the silent corporate cancer.’”

Partial e-mail engagement is another option — but still a struggle. Those who try this strategy must inform their circle of acquaintances that “I am reachable, just e-mail is not a good way to do it.” Good supervisors will help their subordinates learn to differentiate between information they want and information that’s too excessive. Simple replies of “thanks” or “tm” for too much might help.

We have to start cutting back.

“E-mail overload gives many workers the sense that their work is never done,” according to senior analyst David Ferris, whose firm Ferris Research said there were 6 trillion business e-mails sent in 2006, according to The Washington Post recently.

The average corporate worker handles 142 e-mails a day, according to market research by the Radicati Group Inc. “Unless people take steps to send less, the researchers predict the volume will grow to 228 messages a day by 2011,” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Others, however, take measures that are more drastic.

The Washington Post last month quoted venture capitalist Fred Wilson, who said he was so far behind on e-mail that he was “declaring e-mail bankruptcy.” That is, he was deleting everything and starting over.

The following are “10 Ways to Get a Grip on Your E-mail” from Fortune magazine:

• Send less. Target your e-mail messages rather than spraying them.

• Quit boomeranging. If you send a lot of e-mail messages, you’ll get even more replies. If you eliminate just one in five of your outgoing e-mail messages, the incoming volume should shrink.

• Stop and reconsider. Only send e-mail when it helps the recipient do his or her job better.

• Be polite, up to a point. Try including an acronym in the subject line like “NTN” (“no thanks needed”) or “NRN” (“no reply needed”).

• Schedule live conversations (in-person or phone) instead of sending an e-mail.

• Strengthen your subject lines by avoiding vague subject lines.

• Structure matters. Avoid sending a wall of words. Break the message into segments.

• Save purposefully. Be picky about what you save.

• File smart.

At what point does being an information addict become an e-mail/Net addict? Would you ever consider declaring e-mail bankruptcy?

Resources

Whistle While You ‘Wilf’ Online
by Tom Regan
The Christian Science Monitor, April 18, 2007

Are You an Internet Addict?
by Gina Hughes
Yahoo! Tech, Nov. 3, 2006

The E-mail Addict
by Michael Agger
Slate, May 2, 2007

E-mail Reply to All: ‘Leave Me Alone’
by Mike Musgrove, Sabrina Valle and Richard Drezen
The Washington Post, May 25, 2007

Be Sure to Engage Brain Before Clicking Mouse
by Joel Dresang
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 17, 2007

10 Ways to Get a Grip on Your E-mail
by Anne Fisher
Fortune, May 21, 2007