Bad Weather: Better for Work, Terrible for Everything Else

The Atlantic: 

Talking about the weather used to be drudgery saved for only the most boring acquaintances. But in the age of temperature selfies and record snow, winter’spopularity on the Internet seems to thrive in spite of the season’s toll on our minds (and bodies).

Winter and the snowstorms that come with it have traditionally been associated with a drop in economic output, with some estimates in the billions annually for the U.S. alone. But productivity studies hum a different tune for office workers: When the weather’s bad outside, workers are more productive at their jobs inside.

Researchers Jooa Julia Lee, Francesca Gino, and Bradley Staats looked at how weather affects worker productivity at a Japanese bank, online, and in the lab. They hypothesized that good weather is distracting because “attractive outdoor options is a form of task-unrelated thinking that serves as a cognitive distraction that shifts workers’ attention away from the task at hand.” In other words, when a worker is thinking about all the things they could be doing on a nice summer day instead of being stuck at the office, they’re not focused on work.

Read the whole story: The Atlantic