The human mind is a curiosity engine. Give it nothing to do but work, no way to satisfy curiosity or desire for social interaction, and . More specifically, it will retreat into the daydreaming echo chamber. It will wander. It will seek ways to sabotage other employees (because that, at least, is interesting). It will employ its natural ingenuity to find ways to avoid work.

Turn the mind loose on the Internet, and it will likely go get whatever it needs when it needs it, then return back to focus on productive work stimulated, inspired and educated.

And finally, we come to telecommuters, extreme telecommuters and digital nomads, and why they're the most productive employees of all. I think the main reason is simply that these workers are unsupervised, and can freely surf the Internet for any reason at any time. (Plus, they don't have to sit through so many meetings or waste time commuting.)

As any telecommuter or mobile worker will tell you, they tend to establish a rhythm or process for managing work tasks with personal Web surfing that maximizes the quality of both.

It's time for managers to shed old and false assumptions about the relationship between Internet slacking and productivity, and treat all workers like telecommuters.