Are you sure you want to spend time with this?
Timesinkers sorted by how much time they cost me:
WoW > reddit and the like > feeds > books > IM, IRC discussions > Guitar Hero
Timesinkers ordered by how satisfied I feel after spending time with them:
books > IM, IRC discussions > Guitar Hero > feeds > reddit and the like > WoW
It’s almost inversely proportional! I don’t think that’s a coincidence. You have to spend a lot of time with World of Warcraft or news sites because they’re so unsatisfying, and keep you hooked for the next low-probability random reinforcement. Feeds are more focused to your interests, so you don’t need to waddle that much in a sea of stuff you don’t care about. Conversations with your friends are always interesting, and of course so are your books.
This gives a good guideline for optimizing your timewasting: if it doesn’t make you feel happy, it’ll probably take too much time, too. I stopped playing WoW altogether when I noticed that an hour of Guitar Hero was more fun than a whole month of grinding; and then, suddenly, there was life after work again.
posts feed
There is an important detail
Reddit / feeds / irc can occupy ‘waiting’ time (code’s compiling…) at work. And even though I wouldn’t doubt people CAN play WoW at Google, it is still awkward…
And you can always play guitar hero with the PS2 at the coffee table.
Comment by Tabgal — 2008-04-11 16:52:57
Exactly. Feeds are my best excuse for procrastination. I’ve just spent two hours finding why I couldn’t access Google (as in Google Reader) and finally managed to open it changing my DNS servers. Now I’ll throw away the rest of the afternoon reading the feeds. YAY
The problem on using reddit / feeds to occupy waiting time is that you always spend more time on them than the time your code took to compile…
Comment by Conrado — 2008-04-11 17:38:36
We can play WoW alright, and in fact I began playing it ’cause I wanted to join my coworkers’ group. But most people don’t fire it up in the workplace, except after work hours (particularly in the WoW Nights at Wednesdays). My problem with WoW wasn’t that it was wasting my work time; it was wasting my free time. I spent almost all non-work hours leveling my troll shaman, or researching stuff for her background story.
Yeah, different timesinks need different contexts. Books are heavy and need silence and light. To play Guitar Hero you have to walk to the game room. Reddit is always at your fingertips…
Comment by leoboiko — 2008-04-11 18:01:10
Conrado: are we connected in Reader? If not, let’s add each other as friends so that we can waste even more time; I love the sharing feature but feel that I have too few contacts using it.
Comment by leoboiko — 2008-04-11 18:06:26
I don’t think so, feel free to add me (it’s the e-mail I entered in the comment). I don’t have any contacts using it too…
Comment by Conrado — 2008-04-11 20:00:20