I believe that I may be a master of wasting time. It’s not that I can not be productive and achieve, but it is the case that I am a person who can work hard, followed by bouts of extreme laziness.
Here are a few of the things that I believe waste most time for me:
- Normal terrestrial TV, plus a few digital channels;
- On-demand TV; I use HomeChoice which offers numerous series of programs without advert breaks. In recent weeks, I have watched Star Trek Series 1, The Practice Series 3, Most of Smallville (not sure which series); and loads of individual programs. Overall, probably the biggest waste of time here!
- Copying tapes to Minidisc;
- …and then trying to input the data on tracks and so forth onto the disk / disc;
- Trying to decide which (IT) technologies to learn about;
- Installing Windows updates – though it has become quite a bit easier of late. Of course, this is not a ‘waste of time’ in the sense that it is almost certainly a sensible thing to do. But it does get in the way of the stuff that you really want to be doing (even if that’s avoiding other stuff);
- Web-browsing for non-specific things, and often for really quite specific stuff. Say I want to learn something about permutation / combination algorithms, well you may well find something about that topic, which leads to all sorts of interesting stuff on probability theory and goodness knows what else. Oh and that reminds me I must buy that book I always wanted whilst I’m online, and perhaps update my CD collection with – oh I’m sure I can find something I might like. You get the picture;
- Sudoku puzzles;
- Probably starting a blog. Let’s work on the assumption that the majority of bloggers have approximately 0 visitors to their blog. What chance of success do you / I have?
- Washing up. Yes, I know that in theory a dishwasher could help here. However, most dishwashers seem to take more effort to empty, and most are at a lower level than the sink, which means that using them is even worse for my back. So washing up it is… albeit only occasionally;
- Eating. Yes – sometimes I love my food, but mostly I see it as fulfilling a need, not in and of itself something that is great;
- Sleeping. Again, in practice sleeping is a Good Thing that I seem to enjoy sometimes, but if I could do without it, without impact, every now and then, I would. But that is a game of consequences that I probably shouldn’t start playing here. For me, Sleeping does pass the newly invented ‘Needs / Enjoy’ test. For example, I more-often think “I really need a good sleep” than “I’d really enjoy a good sleep”. Test passed – sleeping is a drag;
- Oops I just invented a test that means I can now include things that I should do, but really do not enjoy doing! Therefore, Paying Bills is a waste of time as it takes up several hours per month… or at least that and the associated accounting efforts. I gave up using Direct Debit when (on a bad financial month) I lost £30 in charges on a failed £3 direct debit to charity. This was after a whole raft of failed debits and I finally went back to writing cheques;
- Automated phone menu systems. Two classic examples are ParcelForce and British Telecom. As a side note, why do most customer-service staff fall into the following three categories:
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- Ignorant of their own subject, and are subsequently unable to help you. Indeed, they probably do not know of anyone who could assist you. Even if they did, they would probably be so disenfranchised with the company that they would also have moved into the next category…;
- Very knowledgeable and know exactly how to resolve any issues, but unfortunately they are beligerant so, well, it’s easier to put you through to the wrong department so they can head off to lunch with their mates;
- Incredibly friendly and helpful. They seem to know all the right things to say, and the call ends very happily. 5 minutes later, the phone line that was set to be cancelled a week-Friday isn’t working, and a month later it turns out the fax line (that was disconnected at the right time) hasn’t quite finished the cancellation process, and that’s why you’ve not received a refund yet.
- A catch-all. Stupid, random things. Someone knocked my motorbike over recently, presumably a ‘parking accident’ which left me with £200 of bills and at least one day wasted in getting it fixed – a real pisser as the bike was a month old and now it looks like I don’t have any balance.
Noticing that a passing lorry has knocked a lamppost so it is precariously leaning towards my building… should I call the council? Considering I live up the road from a building that used to be a grocers and is currently sporting a pile of rubble – due to a bus totalling the building, I guess I should think myself lucky.
Whining about things. Still, at least in these moods (when I am doing it) I normally get fed up pretty quickly and get round to doing something about whatever it is.
Worrying.
Of course, not all of the above are things that I do with the intent to waste time. Sometimes, I honestly believe at the time that I am enjoying what I am doing, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some of the things are clearly things that in and of themselves are such a cause of waste that I find myself doing other things on the list to avoid them – even if they are the real negatives on the list. Still, this may be a useful metric for me – and perhaps you too. For example; if I find myself enjoying washing up (as waste of time, that I do not normally enjoy) it may be the case that this is the lesser of two evils… and perhaps what I really ought to be doing is to call BT about that bloody missing phone line!