Don’t close yourself to the wonders of the internet and its amazing potential to expand your worldview and change the way you understand time management

A click in time wastes hours

Being productive is overrated,  Don’t close yourself to the wonders of the internet and its amazing potential to expand your worldview and change the way you understand time management

Wasting time on the internet is as effortless and inadvertent as falling off a chair. It’s not something you need to be taught how to do, by and large — it’s something that just happens, with little regard for your lowered productivity at work or much-touted time management skills. It usually begins innocently enough — your gateway drug was probably Facebook, with its ‘popular links’ beckoning you to read just this one article about the health benefits of power yoga. Before you know it, four hours have passed and you are now the possessor of detailed information about JK Rowling’s new book, the booming industry of Bikram yoga, and the ‘lobotomobile’ — the van which thus christened and favoured by Walter Jackson Freeman II as he drove around America doling out brutal and unnecessary brain lobotomies. Suddenly, you’re left with a wasted day and racked with feelings of guilt. But like any other junkie, sooner or later you’re back, clicking away, consuming information, gossip and pictures of cats with a glazed look in your eyes. Some are either overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the internet and its powers, or left cold by the sheer idiocy of the same. Some peer enviously at their friends who seem to watch a video before it goes viral and can trace the evolution of a meme from a humorous photo to thousands of humorous photos. They know not how to break free of the humdrum cycle of the Hotmail, Gmail and Facebook tabs they have open. I imagine these people trudging back to their orderly, productive lives with a soul-ache they can’t quite identify (possibly because they’ve never been very effective Googlers). These despairing masses need not despair any longer. This article will set you walking on the yellow brick road of time mismanagement, towards a bountiful land of information both useless and useful. First, identify your primary areas of interest. What you read and watch online will eventually have little to no connection to these areas of interest, but it’s good to have a starting point. There is no subject that the internet does not explore, and there are some to which it devotes more of its faculties than others. Like porn, photos of cats, illegal downloading, celebrity voyeurism, and arcane and inaccurate information. If you’re at a loss as to where to start, 99 per cent of the human population will find their specialisation among these. Websites which act like news aggregators, such as the Google Reader in Gmail, Feedly (www.feedly.com) and Fark (www.fark.com), work well for those who need to feel like the time spent online was in some way meaningful. Fark especially is known for its offbeat news items which aren’t to be found anywhere else online. Another source of information that contains within it the alluring possibility of being useful at some point in the unforeseeable future is Tumblr (www.tumblr.com), where you can sign up for free and then subscribe to feeds as diverse as Shit My Dad Says (www.shitmydadsays.tumblr.com) and The Paris Review (www.theparisreview.tumblr.com). Copious amounts of research on my part has revealed that Youtube, Buzzfeed and Twitter are the black holes of the internet. If it’s funny, disgusting, inspiring or all three, these websites will have it and share it with zealot-like enthusiasm. Youtube has come a long way from the days of the Double Rainbow video (search for it, it’s well worth three and a half minutes of your life): a video of a man clearly under some sort of influence, waxing eloquent about a double rainbow. A couple of years since that landmark development, Youtube has burgeoned into a behemoth filled with videos of people hurting themselves in inventive new ways, of animals doing adorable things and of coordinated and catchy dance routines. There are some websites that don’t beat around the bush: for example, I Waste So Much Time (www.iwastesomuchtime.com). An odd collection of funny images, text and memes from around the internet, I Waste... is one of many sites that demand little from your brain cells and yet keep your eyes glassy and trained on the screen. But make no mistake, the internet isn’t entirely vacuous. Check out postsecret.com to see artistically-rendered secrets from people all over the world. The secrets range from deeply saddening (“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” says one simply) to hilariously endearing (“I wear glasses and carry newspapers just to see what it would feel like to be Superman”). There is also the online subculture of webcomics. Most are rubbish, but click over to www.asofterworld.com for one of the sharper voices in webcomics. The simple, one-or-two-line strips are darkly humorous, such as one that says “I know what the secret to happiness is. I can’t tell you though – you not knowing is a big part of it.” For local flavour, see The Vigil Idiot (www.thevigilidiot.com) to see the philosophical insights that may be gleaned when stick figures and Bollywood are united. After you’ve skimmed through the above offerings, the second step is much more important — don’t stop clicking. The internet is for the intrepid explorer, not the cowering mail-checker. As a character from Pixar’s Up says, “Adventure is out there!” You know, out there — on the internet.