So I was sitting in the office waiting for a report to be processed and I went on the Interweb and saw this article (CNET.com: Extreme office time-wasters) about the Top 10 extreme office time-wasters. Curious, I checked my report and it saw that it was still churning along so I continued on with the article. I found myself guilty of many of these time-wasters, at one time or another. In no particular order, here is their Top 10 list.

1. Instant messengers – My IM of choice is MSN Messenger, although I hardly use it these days. My previous place of employment blocked the use of MSN Messenger so we’d have to use Meebo, Web Messenger, or some other method but it’s not my time-waster of choice.
2. Social networks – For me, the only social networking sites I’m on are Facebook and LinkedIn. I joined LinkedIn when I was without a job at the beginning of the year. But I quickly found a job and I don’t use LinkedIn now. In the first couple of months when I first joined facebook, I frequented it a lot but nowadays, I go days on end without logging in because I don’t really have a need for it anymore. I don’t check at work and I hardly check at home, either. Maybe I need more friends.
3. Newsreaders – Now this I can attest to. The first thing I do in the morning when I get into the office is settle down, get my coffee, and load up Google Reader. Newsreaders are awesome because I don’t have to go visit individual sites to see what’s new and I don’t have to ask myself whether I’ve read this article or that post already. In reality, I only spend about 30 minutes a day total catching up on Google Reader (and that’s usually when I’m stuck in a work-related wait).
4. YouTube – Nope, not at work. I assume it uses a lot of bandwidth so that’s an IT flag. Plus, you typically need the sound with the video and most offices don’t tolerate loud noises coming from computers. The only time I go to YouTube is if someone sends me a link to view. I’d never go to YouTube without a purpose.
5. PC and online games – Playing games at work? Are you kidding me? Maybe if you work at EA or something. I don’t think work computers even have the default games installed on them (at least not for the companies I’ve worked for). Besides, I love me some PS3.
6. E.mail – My primary e.mail account is at Hotmail and my previous employer blocked access to Hotmail. That totally sucked (not just for me but a lot of people). We had some IT-inclined co-workers that found backdoors via proxies but IT caught on pretty quick once more and more people went that route. My current place of employee doesn’t seem to have any firewalls blocking wbsites (like Hotmail or Facebook). I guess they trust their employees to be adults and not abuse the system. I check Hotmail three times a day: morning, lunch, and right before I leave work. I just see if there’s any new e.mails and if I can respond quickly, I do. Otherwise, I wait until I get home. I try to get people to e.mail urgent things to my work e.mail address because thanks to my BlackBerry, I’ll always get that immediately.
7. Photos – I confess, Flickr is my BOF (best online friend). I go to Flickr quite often throughout the day, just to catch up on comments to my photostream and new photos from my contacts. But when I need to leisurely browse through groups and view photos in more detail, I save that for home. The photos look better with Safari anyways.
8. Manual file-searching – No comment, I don’t even think this qualifies as a time-waster. At least not a voluntary time-waster one would like to do.
9. iTunes – I had iTunes installed on my computer at my last place of work and I imported ALL my music from home. We also shared music over the work networks so that was cool. With my new work, I don’t have iTunes installed but I did bring some music from home and I rock the Windows Media player with tunes while I work. As long as the music doesn’t get too loud and it doesn’t bother anyone, I think you should be allowed to listen to music at work. I have a small problem with headphones; they’re fine, as long as you’re not oblivious to the world around you.
10. E-commerce – Again, I’m guilty of this time-waster. Once in a while, I do my banking online at work. And once in a while, I’ll check online stores for deals or price comparisons. But I’m not a shopaholic. I know what I want to buy and I buy what I want. When I don’t know what I want to buy, then I go searching for reviews.

That’s not a very comprehensive list but it does include a few things I do at work. I think my worst is Flickr and e-commerce. Other than that, I’m pretty good with my time during work. I get all my work done and I don’t really waste that much time. The non-work things I do at work are usually time fillers, like in-between meetings or if I’m waiting for the computer to process something. It’s all about responsibility and not abusing the trust your company has put into you.