Two words: Teriyaki Chicken

It's the most popular Japanese food tailored to Americans, other than sushi, but it's nowhere nearly as tasty as lots of Japanese food that Japanese people actually consume themselves.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1872738&cid=34264944

I posted elsewhere before I saw penguin_dance's post. Please see the above link for an excerpt of David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest' that discusses this topic, e.g., 'a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved as a kind of chic integrity...' more at the above link... Remember, this was published in 1996, so written like 15 years ago. Who had cell phones then?

Before I had read this part in Infinite Jest, I had already given up my cell phone because it wasn't worth the high cost. It's not that I couldn't afford it, just that it's such a ripoff. I'm actually really enjoying being able to focus on my work when I need to, and I can still make and receive calls with skype, email, or otherwise communicate when it's convenient for me. I do borrow my spouse's cell phone occasionally when I really need one, and if I needed it any more, I'd probably get a pay-go, but I haven't had a real need for that yet.

This plain-old phone would make a great pay-go if it wasn't so expensive. Other pay-go phones are cheaper, and almost as devoid of features. In fact, they're probably worse because they place the 'data/web' button precariously so that you regularly hit it accidentally and have to pay the daily rate for web that's totally useless on the pay-go. At least with the plain-old phone you wouldn't be getting hit with 'crappy-interface' surcharges all the time.

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, c1996

"a return to good old telephoning not only dictated by common consumer sense but actually after a while culturally approved as a kind of chic integrity, not Ludditism but a kind of retrograde transcendence of sci-fi-ish high-tech for its own sake, a transcendence of the vanity and the slavery to high-tech fashion that people view as so unattractive in one another. In other words a return to aural-only telephony became, at the closed curve's end, a kind of status-symbol of anti-vanity, such that only callers utterly lacking in self-awareness continued to use videophony and Tableaux..."

When we talk about getting in the zone, I think there are two types of problems that need to be considered. First, there is the abstract, technical, or otherwise difficult problem that can only be solved with a short-term burst of extreme concentration and mental effort. Then there is the type of problem that requires a great deal of familiarity with disparate variables, classes, objects, or other pieces to a puzzle. When these pieces are all loaded into your personal RAM, a solution becomes tractable, but which if you try to look at the issues piecemeal, some here and some tomorrow, you may not be able to solve. These generally take a large chunk of devoted time in a single sitting. Both of these problems are mentally taxing.

I've found in my computing/coding/developing that these periods of solid work can really zap my energy, not because they're not interesting or because I'm not up to the task, but occasionally it just requires a great deal of mental effort. Even when a problem is technically simple, it can require much mental energy, as if I were just multiplying large numbers in my head--the process is known to a first grade pupil, but it still takes a special effort to actually do it.

So, I think I know how you feel about programming, but I'm sorry I can't answer your question about whether it's okay to surf the web and etc while you're on the clock. On the one hand, it doesn't appear to be fair to the employer, and on the other hand it appears to be a nice mindless respite required for you to relax so you can get back to your work refreshed and ready for another heave-ho. An employer might say something like, well, how about if you work on less intense programming for your breaks -- clean up a script, or change the appearance of one thing or another, type up a report, answer some email, or find something mindless which contributes to the company/community.

I think there has been some hyperbole here, saying if you can do in 1 hour what others do in 8, then why not--I see what they mean. You seem pretty reasonable, so I think you're handling it alright. Your maximum efficiency level should be a high priority for you, but another should be how you are perceived by your managers and coworkers, so keep this in mind as well, since it may affect your pay or your career. Of course, your sanity is also important, so try to hang on to that. I think you should try reading Tracy Kidder's book "Soul of a New Machine." http://tiny.cc/bv3sf It's the story of the workers in a company that designed and built a new 32-bit computer in one year in the late 70's. Their lives were totally committed to cranking this out, and they did it, but some of them cracked. Oh, and it's extremely well-written. (Note: no conflict of interest here, except that I liked this and another of his books, "Mountains Beyond Mountains.")