Five Ways to Waste Time at Work

Everyone does it. Few own up to it. We all waste time at work in some form or another. Human beings are not meant to be cooped up in office cubicles all day, pinning away at paperwork, and TPS reports.

Yet, day after day, we get up, get dressed, drink mediocre coffee, drive to our jobs and count the minutes until we can be free from that hell hole for another few hours. We spend so much time at work that it is only inevitable that we would waste some of it. I mean, have you ever tried to clean your house for 8 hours straight? Or drive your car for 8 hours straight? Or eat for 8 hours straight? No. Because that would be insane. So why do we think we need to work for 8 hours straight. Society still has a long way to go with this one.

But nonetheless, here are five surefire ways you can waste some time at work tomorrow; because let’s face it, you are going to waste some time at work tomorrow. You might as well be entertained!

1. Well, you are reading this article, so that is a good place to start. Just take a minute to think about how much you hate your job that you are looking for articles about how to waste time at work, while you are at work. Maybe it’s time for a career change, people? But in the meantime, keep reading.

2. Memes. Have you seen these? Of course, you have. Memes have taken over the internet. If you aren’t careful, you can end up a meme yourself. Have you seen car memes? You’ll want to check some of those out if you are into cars at all. And if you aren’t, you can make fun of the people who are through these memes.

3. Eating. We all love eating. Bring some donuts to work tomorrow and watch people gather and waste your time for you! You get the street cred of being the person who brought donuts, and you don’t look like the person wasting time – you are just the nice person who brought donuts.

4. Clean out your inbox. One of the best ways to waste time at work while looking busy is to clean out your email. You’ve probably got 15,000 emails anyway and you probably legitimately need to make time to do this, so why not use it to waste some time on someone else’s dime. I’ll often clean out my own personal email as well. Incognito web browsers allow you to surf the web without it showing up in your browsing history. Who is the genius that thought of that one!?

5. Get up and go talk to someone instead of sending them an email. It’s exercise, or whatever, but really, you just want to utilize the time it takes to walk across the office and waste it. This is a good tactic for looking busier than you are too.

Whatever your job, no matter how much you love it, you probably find yourself distracted from time to time and want to welcome some kind of preoccupation. This is just a short list of ways you can waste your time at work. Watch what your coworkers are doing with their time. I bet they have lots of ways to waste time at work too. They’ll never tell though; it’s like a code. No one wants you to know they are just goofing off. It’s not acceptable, apparently.