The Wonsys Blog

Most people would think procrastination is our worst enemy and while it certainly isn’t a good behaviour, I think there’s one thing worse than it: wasting time doing something you think is useful, even though it isn’t.

Not all the time-wasters are born equal.
Generally speaking there are 3 different ways to waste time:

1. Totally useless
   You waste time doing something you know is totally useless, but still think it’s the right thing to do in that moment. For example, you can’t remember what the name of that character in that book was, or when was Martin Luther King born? and you’re sure there’s no way you can continue doing what you were doing unless you remember it.
   Believe me, you can give up your search after no more than 30 seconds, because in the end, who cares?
2. Still totally useless
   You’re doing your work and something pops up in your mind which you think is somehow related to what you’re doing, so you decide to stop doing what you actually need to do, to find more about it.
   Maybe it’s a new editor you want to try, or a new set of icons for your Web app, and so on.
   Sure, it’s loosely related to what you were doing, but does it really matter? will it really help you with what you were doing? you know it won’t, so if you think it’s still important, write it on a piece of paper and get back to work.
   You shouldn’t spend more than 2 minutes on it!
3. It would be nice, yet not worth it
   Imagine you’re writing some code. Maybe you’re trying to solve an intricate problem, and you know there must be a better way to solve it than the one you’re writing.
   Not that what you’re doing is not working, indeed, it’s working nicely and doing what it’s supposed to do, yet, there must be a cooler way to do it, one that will elevate you to programming-guru, maybe with a couple lines of code less. Still, you can’t find it and there’s no way you’re going to make it in the next few hours.
   If you know there’s an easy way to do it and a harder, almost similar, yet a bit more geeky way to do it, don’t spend more than 30 minutes trying to take the hardest path: you either get there immediately, or you’d be better off taking the easier path and move on as soon as you can.
   Again, you can add a comment to remember you what you were trying to achieve, so the first time you’ll have some spare time, you can try it again.

It’s good to take a break every now and then and you certainly have to do it, but not when you’re trying to get something done.
Next time you’re about to do something else than what you’re supposed to do, ask yourself: Is it really useful?
If the answer is no, get back to work immediately!

P.S.
Did I really need to write this post, instead of going on with what I actually had to do? ;)

This post was written by Michele 2 years, 7 months ago on August 2nd, 2007 mid-afternoon.