Personal Reflections on my Productivity as a Result of the SOPA Blackout

As the end of my workday nears, I find myself thinking about how much I got done today versus a normal day without SOPA Blackouts. Did I get more work done? The same? Or somehow less?

Today was an average day as far as items to work on. This helps make the analysis a lot easier to make. The meeting load was mostly normal with the exception of a group meeting that wasted 30 minutes. An average number of people stopped by my desk to gab as well. Overall the perfect day for comparison.

This morning I accomplished several large updates to some existing requirements. Later some process flows were completed along with a review of some stakeholder requirements. This afternoon was filled with a presentation to a vendor and a review of some business requirements with feedback. A mildly productive day.

Let's look at yesterday. There was a completion of several large updates to living documentation. Several more meetings than today. I reviewed many test scripts produced by our on shore resources and provided feedback. There was also a finalization of some requirements. A very productive day!

We can conclude in this very unscientific study that the SOPA and PIPA blackout of Reddit, FARK, Wikipedia, and a whole host of other sites had no discernible impact on the amount of work accomplished today.

SOPA Blackout and Productivity Impacts Today

Today is the big day where a lot of popular websites like Reddit and Wikipedia are blacked out in protest of SOPA and PIPA. Without getting into a discussion of politics, let's talk about what's really interesting here: how will this blackout impact productivity in the workplace?

It's likely we'll see some news stories about how much money companies saved as a result of this SOPA blackout on the financial networks, but it will probably be a rough guess at best.

My best guess is that it will have the biggest impact on the tech sector companies. The type of websites that are down are generally geared towards younger people that are likely involved with IT, like Reddit and FARK. There will be less impact on other companies because the IT portions of their business are more event driven based off business need.

In the end the overall impact will be minor, and no manager will notice a difference despite what the talking heads end up making up for a dollar figure. Although I can't wait to see what that made up figure is!