Friday Five: Timewasters
Jun. 18th, 2026 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
castironFor all of these, I'm definining "waste of time" as something that's unnecessary and annoying. It's not a waste of time to clean the bathroom, even if I find it tedious. It's not a waste of time to play a few rounds of solitaire when I want to do something enjoyable and mindless, even though it's an unproductive activity.
1. What is your biggest waste of time in your home? Stuff-shifting. We have so much clutter that I always have to move things before I can clean, and I often have to move piles of stuff to get at a bookshelf or drawer. When it's my stuff in the way, I can get rid of it or find a better place to keep it; when it's Spouse's, there's more negotiation.
2. When at work, what is the activity that you find wastes the most time? My workplace is actually pretty good about this; I don't feel like I'm assigned much in the way of pointless timewasting tasks. Once in a while I'm asked to pull a report that doesn't end up used, or that I have to rerun because the requestor didn't give me all the fields they needed, but overall either the task I did is useful to the company, or it didn't turn out useful to the company but helped me learn something.
3. When getting busy with a date or significant other, what ritual could you do without? This is a very weird question, and not applicable to my life at this time.
4. What is the biggest waste of time on the Internet? For me, there's not any individual site that's inherently a waste of time; it only becomes one when I'm mindlessly spending time there without stopping first to think whether there's something else I'd rather be doing.
5. What do you do at a restaurant to waste time when waiting for your meal? I don't. Either I have a companion with whom I can have a pleasant conversation, or I have a book that I can enjoy reading before and during my meal.
1. What is your biggest waste of time in your home? Stuff-shifting. We have so much clutter that I always have to move things before I can clean, and I often have to move piles of stuff to get at a bookshelf or drawer. When it's my stuff in the way, I can get rid of it or find a better place to keep it; when it's Spouse's, there's more negotiation.
2. When at work, what is the activity that you find wastes the most time? My workplace is actually pretty good about this; I don't feel like I'm assigned much in the way of pointless timewasting tasks. Once in a while I'm asked to pull a report that doesn't end up used, or that I have to rerun because the requestor didn't give me all the fields they needed, but overall either the task I did is useful to the company, or it didn't turn out useful to the company but helped me learn something.
3. When getting busy with a date or significant other, what ritual could you do without? This is a very weird question, and not applicable to my life at this time.
4. What is the biggest waste of time on the Internet? For me, there's not any individual site that's inherently a waste of time; it only becomes one when I'm mindlessly spending time there without stopping first to think whether there's something else I'd rather be doing.
5. What do you do at a restaurant to waste time when waiting for your meal? I don't. Either I have a companion with whom I can have a pleasant conversation, or I have a book that I can enjoy reading before and during my meal.