Let's face it, work isn't supposed to be lots of fun. As my grandfather used to say, they call it 'work' for a reason.
That's why everyone needs to blow off a little steam during the day, and some research suggests doing so actually makes us more productive. To keep from going crazy, we need to take a little break here or there. For those of us stuck behind a computer all day, this often takes the form of software and web sites.
There are going to be some people reading this who think “ah ha, I've just been given a list of sites to block at the firewall so my people will work harder!” Not a bit of it, plenty of the names on this list are very useful and blocking them is counter-productive, as well as making the IT manager look like the Grinch.
This week, we count down some of our favourite wastes of time. At least, we will count them down at some point... right after I check this one last site…
Honourable Mention: Instant messaging
Iain Thomson: Fair's fair, there is a strong business case for instant messaging. It's an invaluable tool for non-physical meetings and I use it daily to get in contact with the UK office without running up huge phone bills.
But that said it's also a time sink in other ways. How often are you sitting at your desk working on something when some slacker who you have no interest in hearing from suddenly IMs because they are at a loose end. Unfortunately politeness requires that you answer and before you know it you've spend ten minutes in useless chatter and your train of thought has been hopelessly derailed.
But, I hear you say, isn't that just the same as an unwanted phone call? Not at all, thanks to the wonders of technology. If you don't want to be disturbed you can always shut the phone off and pretend you're out. With IM they know you are there and there's no escape. This is why I only turn the IM system on when contact would be welcomed.
Shaun Nichols: Yes Iain, if only there were some sort of message you could put up to tell people that you're away from the desk or busy with work at the moment...
Even with away messages there's a problem, however. Perhaps you're not busy talking to someone else via IM with legitimate business, but that one friend who just seems to have way to much free time sees you and sends the "hello" message, followed a few minutes later by the dreaded "are you there?" and then "hellooooo?"
Aside from the time-wasting dangers, there are other worries with instant messaging. Perhaps you have a conversation with your girlfriend in one window, a quick chat with a co-worker or boss in another window, and yet another containing a back-and-forth with your best friend. We've all been there, and we all know full well the dangers which arise when you're not paying very close attention to which window you're typing in. Even if you get along really well with your boss he's not going to want sweet nothings appearing in his IM box by mistake.
Honourable Mention: SMS messaging
Shaun Nichols: Like our other honourable mention, text messages are a very useful technology that can easily become a distraction.
The big risk about text messaging is that it is almost completely silent and easy to conceal. This can make it very easy to sneak in a text message or five while sitting at your desk. Helpful if you're setting up a dinner date, but hazardous if you're whittling away the minutes filling a friend in on last night's date.
This becomes an even bigger problem for those of us that have friends on the dole. Getting through that 3:00-4:00pm stretch is hard enough as it is, but it's nearly impossible when your out-of-work buddy is texting you from the couch with his theories about the connections between Greek mythology and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Iain Thomson: With friends like that Shaun...
SMS does have valuable uses, and it's of enormous value to the phone companies who make billions a year out of it. SMS, despite being very old technology, is still the most profitable data service on mobile phones today.
But we're all seen the effects of SMS on some people, particularly the youth of today. The next generation is going to get a crick in its neck from constantly being bent over a mobile phone and scientists are already noting that extreme texters have begun using their thumbs to point at things rather than the traditional index finger. Humanity will only be saved because these people will get run over trying to cross roads while typing LMAO one more time.
10. B3TA
Iain Thomson: In 2001 three highly talented British basket-cases set up B3TA (pronounced Beta) to showcase and create the weirdest stuff online and the rest is,as they say, history. I suspect Shaun rues the day I sent him his first link to the site.
The site is more addictive than crack, and much more fun. The Friday newsletter is a thing of joy to read and the forums are full of both unusual links and some of the best Photoshopping and computer animation this side of Hollywood. There's a weekly Photoshop challenge and a Question of the Week contest too, all voted on exclusively by the membership.
It has spawned some of the internet's most enduring memes, including the infamous Badger, Badger, Badger animation which is the most persistent earworm I've ever encountered. Several of my friends want to kill me for passing it on to them.
As a timewaster it is excellent. At CES this year I introduced an American journalist to the site's sick joke wiki and he spent the next two days lambasting me for ruining his productivity and supplying him with enough jokes to get him tarred and feathered in his home state.
The membership could best be described as 'quirky', but the quality of submissions is so high you can spend hours clicking and laughing. My days would be poorer indeed without the stories of SpankyHanky, Legless, Grandmasterfluffles et al, the skilled animation of the other members and the knowledge that crackhouseceilidhband has taken flashmobbing to unusual new areas.
Shaun Nichols: For my fellow Americans who are not quite familiar with the site, B3TA is sort of like 4Chan, minus the shock porn.
Iain turned me on to B3TA shortly after his arrival in the US office, and because of that I have an excuse I can try whenever I spend a bit too much time on the site and nearly miss a deadline. It doesn't work but hey, it's worth a shot if I'm desperate.
Anyone who thinks that British humour is a completely dry, sophisticated affair need look no further than B3TA. Though the jokes are often very clever, there's also a fair amount of goofy, silly humour. I would recommend to everyone here in the States that we pull an "Office" and embrace B3TA. Maybe we can send back Simon Cowell as compensation.
9. Wikipedia
Shaun Nichols: When you need to look up a quick fact or double-check some stats, Wikipedia can be a very useful tool. When you need to buckle down and get work done, however, it can be a terrible vice.
We've all been there; you pop on for a quick look-up to verify a date in history or maybe settle a break-room argument. Then a link on that page looks interesting, so you check it out. Then another link catches your eye. Before you know it you've spent 45 minutes reading up on Soviet freight aircraft of the late Cold War-era.
So it’s not just questionable sources that one needs to be wary of when searching Wikipedia, there's also the lure of soaking up useless facts while you're supposed to be getting work done.
Iain Thomson: It's the random article button on the Wikipedia page that has been my downfall in the past.
Picture the scene; it's lunchtime, the sandwich is laid out before you and Wikipedia is open. A few trial clicks and before you know it you're hooked. It's a deadly trap that's difficult to wean yourself off.
That's not to say there aren't benefits. I now know more than any man should about rotary vane air compression, the debate over the correct plural for octopus and US Airforce experimental aircraft post World War Two. This may at some point be of use, but I'm betting it won't be at the next industry press conference I attend, unless things get really weird.
8. Fark
Iain Thomson: In days of yore we used to use the term Slashdotted to describe the effect of having something posted on the popular tech news site and then having your servers fall over when the rush of traffic hit. Nowadays we use the term Farked.
Fark collects the news from around the world and posts it on a continually updated board. What makes it special is that the submitters of links are volunteers and supply their own headlines. Most of these are so good you shouldn't view the site while drinking a cup of tea in case the keyboard and monitor get an unexpected bath from reading something too funny.
Nevertheless the site does serve a purpose. It breaks news early, both serious and weird, and is useful for keeping up with what's going on in the world. On the other hand it's an enormous time sink because, however way you spin it, learning about lunacy in Florida or oddballs in other parts of the world is seldom useful for work.
Shaun Nichols: How I ever lived before Fark, I'll never know. It's like a news aggregator that goes ahead and makes all of the snarky comments for you. And to think there was a day when people had to actually hold up a newspaper and make the sarcastic comments about the stupidity of it all on their own!
What's even more dangerous about Fark is that if you read it long enough, you too begin to talk like a "Farker." While this can be quite satisfying at times, it also can get you in a bit of trouble when around others who have yet to become jaded by the site's cutting and merciless approach to news analysis. My grandmother still hasn't forgiven me for referring to her beloved kitten Troubles as "the ugliest thing you'll see all day."
7. Boards/Forums
Shaun Nichols: One of the great things about the internet is that it allows pretty much anyone with any sort of interest to find a community of like-minded individuals. Often the best way to connect with others around the world is through a message board or forum.
Just as phone conversations with friends can carry on far too long, an internet conversation with a web friend can run late and get you into trouble at work. If you sit behind a desk, however, this can be even more of a danger than talking on the telephone.
While the boss can see and hear you yapping on the phone and shoot you a dirty look, someone has to be standing behind you looking over your shoulder to see the activity on your screen. How do you tell if someone is typing up a report or debating with a guy in Miami about which 1980s Bill Murray film was the best?
Iain Thomson: I'd say Shaun's initial point cuts both ways; like-minded individuals joining together is fine, so long as their interests are benign.
But when it comes to forums he raises the most meaningful point. At work, so long as people can't see your screen, you could be doing pretty much anything online and it would take monitoring software to tell the difference.
Unluckily for Shaun I sit right behind him so can see his screen, but luckily for him I don't worry too much if he pops onto the boards occasionally - so long as the work gets done on time and to the highest standards.
One of the finest explanations of the downfalls of forums came in, of all things, the West Wing. You can see an explanation here but I'd advise getting the full episode to appreciate the full danger of forums.
What else made it to the list? Read on to discover how workers spend their time!
6. I Can Has Cheezburger network
Iain Thomson: This network has spawned such enormous and fun time wasters as LOLCats, the Fail blog and This is Photobomb among others.
It's all user-generated content, mostly wickedly funny and has become firmly established as one of the key time wasters of the modern internet, so much so that Randall Munroe, unofficial online Court Jester, was forced to speculate on the extreme measures needed if the service went down.
I hate to think what proportion of a network's time is spent forwarding some of the pictures these sites contain, and how much business productivity has been lost. But mankind cannot live on work alone and letting loose once in a while is no bad thing.
Shaun Nichols: 400 years from now our descendants will stumble across the crumbled remnants of our society.
Eventually they will be able to access our records, and they will come across the phenomenon of LOLCats. And then they will feel very, very good about the progress mankind has made since the 21st century.
The Cheezburger Network is without a doubt extremely popular, in no small part because it appeals to some very basic humorous qualities that we all enjoy. Anthropomorphic cats are funny. People falling over is funny. Someone messing about in a serious photograph is funny. Like it or not, we all get a chuckle out of it.
5. Fantasy Sports
Shaun Nichols: Perhaps the best part about being a sports fan is that no matter how good or bad your club is performing, you know that if given the chance you would be a far better manager than the guy currently calling the shots.
Fantasy sports lets fans live that role. The idea is that fans form leagues and each person gets to pick a full squad of real world players who score " points" for the team by way of their real-world statistics.
In the US, Fantasy NFL Football has become a huge industry, a sort of video game for adults who normally wouldn't touch a computer. Not only are there countless sites and services designed to help fans organize and manage leagues, but there are also hundreds of books and newsletters devoted to strategy and predictions.
As with any passion, fantasy sports can take up a large chunk of time if not properly managed. It is very easy to lose a good chunk of your day reading up on the top halfbacks or checking the waiver wire for a new receiver.
Iain Thomson: I was a little sceptical about this pick. I thought it was like trainspotting - I mean, people do it but surely not very many.
A bit of research later and I'm a little shocked at the amount of stuff out there for the fantasy sports fan. There's reams of the stuff, with millions of people living out their fantasies of control over the internet. It's been an eye opener.
Lest you think I'm being snooty about the thing I did find some fields that could suck me in too. As a Formula One nut there were loads of interesting fantasy F1 teams out there and, as I scanned the choices, I found myself thinking "oh come on, no-one's picked Sutil in a Red Bull chassis using the McLaren engine - they must be mad!"
It took a concious effort to back off. That way madness lies, but good call Shaun.
4. Minesweeper
Iain Thomson: Microsoft may have increased the productivity of millions of companies but the inclusion of the Minesweeper game in versions of Windows from 3.11 has taken the edge of those productivity gains somewhat.
Minesweeper is a deceptively simple game that you can pick up the rules to in seconds and master the simple version in minutes. But move onto the largest sizes and you're looking at a lot of time and some agonising clicks, which usually end up in teeth-gnashing failure.
Because the game was bundled into the Windows operating system most IT administrators couldn't be bothered to go through the hassle of removing it and bored staff quickly discovered its addictive qualities. The game has changed little over the years - the true sign of a classic - although on Vista you can replace the mines with flowers as a mark of respect to mine victims around the world.
Shaun Nichols: As a small child I can remember going to visit my dad in his office, and having to spend a couple of hours sitting quietly while he attended to an emergency meeting. It was there that I discovered Minesweeper.
You don't think that the game is much at first, particularly when you're used to computer games that involve hacking up mutants with a chainsaw, but Minesweeper very quietly sucks you in. As with many of the best puzzle games, the presentation is very basic and the game is easy to learn. From there however you get involved with a substance only slightly less addictive than caffeine and not nearly as good for productivity.
As Iain noted, Minesweeper still ships with Vista, marking a decades-long run as a mainstay in the operating system. Along with the likes of Tetris and Solitaire, Minesweeper is one of the enduring workplace game titles.
What else made it to the list? Read on to discover how workers spend their time!
3. YouTube
Shaun Nichols: Now we're getting into the really hard stuff. YouTube seems pretty harmless at first. A news blooper here, a skateboard crash there. But those seemingly brief videos add up.
That's how YouTube works. You check one quick clip, perhaps you follow a link from another page. But 2-minute clip links to a 4-minute clip, which links to a 3-minute clip. It can lead to a huge waste of time.
Sure, you just go to check a funny clip of a chimp or relive Joe Montana's epic touchdown pass to Dwight Clark, and the next thing you know you're waist deep in the complete collection of "Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat" videos.
Iain Thomson: YouTube suffers from the same problems as Wikipedia - once you start clicking it's difficult to stop.
While YouTube is great for finding clips of TV shows you haven't seen since you were a young sprog, and rehashed highlights of news events throughout the last few decades it has a serious business purpose as well. V3 posts some of its videos from the site as a way of reaching a wider audience and so do many others, but the same problem remains with that devilish box in the right hand corner of the page covering Related Videos.
A case in point. I'd never seen Montana's pass, so popped over to YouTube to check it out. That then led to watching three more clips and oh, would you look at the time. Great pass mind you.
Whether or not YouTube will stay as used in years to come remains to be seen. The system is already creaking under the strain of funny cat videos and poorly made rants about everything under the sun. I suspect a clean out is in order, and it won't be a moment too soon.
2. Twitter
Iain Thomson: Oh, we fought long and hard over the top two spots for this list. I wanted Twitter for the number one spot but after a long and impassioned argument Shaun won me round.
I was, and to a lesser extent remain, a Twitter sceptic. While I can see it's usefulness in some respects, and now use it regularly, there's a very clear line between useful tweets and the useless ones. In practice about 90 per cent of what you see on there is rubbish, and I have much sympathy with the Twitter Cops and their slogan "No-one cares!"
It also can be highly annoying. A friend of mine in the UK sent out a tweet every two or three minutes for the length of one episode of 'The Apprentice' and by the end of it I was ready to hop on a plane and head over to cut his fingers off. But to stop following his tweets would have been an insult. It's a whole new area of netiquette where the rules have to be worked out.
So while I'll carry on tweeting I'll limit it to important or amusing stuff only. Life's too short for that kind of time sink.
Shaun Nichols: Twitter starts out with the seemingly harmless question of "what are you doing right now." Seems like a simple idea, but a trip to the local pub will show you just how ingenious of a concept Twitter is.
Go to the pub and ask everyone you see "how are you doing right now?" Some people will respond with a short grunt. Others may threaten you with violence, but a portion of the people will launch into an extended rant about their day and what they are going to do later and what they think of so-and-so.
Twitter was designed for that third group of people. And on the internet there are enough of them to drive a ton of traffic to the site. Even worse, many of those chatterbox types are in the media, meaning that Twitter gets even more hype as the "next big thing" because its addicts are all the ones presenting things. Just look at the coverage when Twitter went down - if you believed some news outlets you'd have thought the world was falling apart.
Okay, so the company may not have much of a business model, but it's hard to criticize the underlying concept behind the site and its effect on a very large portion of the internet population.
1. Facebook
Shaun Nichols: We really went back and forth on this one, neither Iain or myself could decide between Twitter and Facebook. Eventually Facebook won out, but only by an eyelash.
In the end Facebook took the top spot because it offered more ways to waste time. In addition to sharing links and posting your latest thoughts, the social networking site also allows you to post picture galleries and now supports the creation of quizzes and mini-games.
In other words, Facebook is a one-stop shop for just about every possible method for wasting time. By the time one gets done with the daily Facebook ritual it's usually time for lunch.
Even after checking up on your friends photo galleries and oversharing the events of the past week via the status box, you still have to check for wall comments and take the "which 18th century Eastern European playwright is your love match?" quiz. It just never ends.
Iain Thomson: It was Shaun's argument about the many ways that Facebook invites us to waste time that won over the day and I think now it was the right decision.
Facebook is marvellous in lots of ways. It has reconnected me with old friends I haven't seen in years, it's used by businesses to get across their messages and keeps friends and family up to date.
But in other ways it's an enormous waste of time. Shaun's mentioned the quizzes but they are just the tip of the iceberg. There's online poker, 25 things you never knew about me exposes and the endless rounds of pokes and presents to be given. Call me a cynic but if you're going to buy me a drink don't do it virtually. I want a frosty glass on the bar beside me or bottle of good Scotch in person please. And if you really want help with pirates call the British navy, not me.
Facebook is a victim of its own success. As more and more people pile into the system application developers are following them, the average person's profile is becoming stuffed with add-ons and the amount of time needed to service them grows. Here's a hint. Once a month go through your profile and delete every application you haven't used - it makes life a lot more simple and efficient.
What else made it to the list? Read on to discover how workers spend their time!
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