Some stuff just feels useful, like you’re doing things that actually help you, while the hours go by. But somehow, nothing’s really done, and you’re wasting time, rather than being productive. Here are fourteen ways of wasting time that feel productive. Which of these have you been guilty of doing?
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Cleaning Your Desk Before Every Task
Sure, clearing off old mugs and receipts isn’t a bad idea, although wiping down your mousepad shouldn’t happen every time you sit down. That’s less a kind of prep and more a way for you to avoid your problems. Essentially, you’re decorating, not working, when you rearrange your lamp and fiddle with cable ties. That’s not helping you finish that proposal.
Researching Tools You Already Use
Somehow, you ended up on a blog comparing all the features of the calendar app you’ve been using for three years, and now you’re considering switching. However, you already know how to schedule things, and this is just a way for you to stall, since you probably don’t even need those new features you’re reading about. But the idea of a “better way” can be weirdly addictive.
Rewriting Your To-Do List
There’s something about rewriting a to-do list that just feels like a fresh start, whether that’s because you have a new layout or a better pen. But if you’ve only written the things you need to do across four pages and still haven’t done it, that’s an issue. Your brain gets a little rush of dopamine every time you organize something, even if you don’t act on it.
Going Over Your Calendar
Speaking of calendars, some people check theirs once in the morning, while others stare at it like it’s going to suddenly change. Moving stuff around doesn’t create time, and color-coding meetings doesn’t get your work done, either. Rather than working on your calendar, you need to just start one thing and stop looking at it.
Watching Productivity YouTubers
You sat down to do some emails, but now you’re watching someone clean their fridge on YouTube and you feel so motivated. The truth is, you’ve been watching productivity instead of doing it, because while their planner looks amazing, you’ve achieved nothing in yours. Soon enough, you forgot what you sat down to do.
Watching Tutorials For Skills You Won’t Practice
Who doesn’t love watching skill tutorial videos about baking sourdough or editing videos? The truth is, you never even thought about it again after the video ended. It doesn’t matter how satisfying it feels to watch someone else do something cool, it doesn’t stick unless you actually try it. And most of the time, you don’t.
Organizing Old Digital Files
You opened one folder to find a PDF, and now you’re renaming and organizing everything like you’re getting paid for it. Honestly, no one’s going to care that you renamed “invoice_final_FINAL2.pdf” to “MarchInvoice_v2” and you could’ve just sent it. It’s not fixing the fact that you still haven’t opened that actual PDF you needed an hour ago.
Reformatting Presentations With No Deadline
You have a presentation from two weeks ago that your boss already signed off on, but you’re still tinkering with the spacing on slide five. The bullet points were fine before, and swapping themes or trying gradient backgrounds isn’t saving lives. It’s not improving anything either, but it feels safer than starting something new. Safe, and also time-consuming.
Creating Systems You Won’t Maintain
After you spent three hours building the perfect Notion dashboard, you feel like you’re prepared. Except now, it’s gathering the equivalent of digital dust, and you’re back to scribbling notes on the back of receipts. If it takes a tutorial to explain, you’re not gonna use it, and you’re probably never going to open it again. It ends up being more decoration than tool.
Sorting Through Your Bookmarks
You thought cleaning up your bookmark folder would help you. However, you didn’t read them then and you won’t now, no matter how organized tidying them up made you feel. After renaming folders and dragging stuff into subfolders, you remembered why you bookmarked them in the first place. You didn’t want to read them right away, and you still don’t.
Sending Check-In Messages Without a Goal
Firing off a “Just checking in!” email sounds proactive, but unless you have a question or an actual reason behind it, it’s a waste of time. People don’t really know how to respond, and you’ve really just created some email clutter, even if you have good intentions. The email didn’t move anything forward and actually just gave you a temporary feeling of busyness.
Redesigning Your Resume When You’re Not Job-Hunting
While you’re not applying for anything and nobody asked for your resume, you still spent all afternoon choosing between two serif fonts. You might have even rewritten your bullet points and tried a new template just for fun. But perhaps you should close the document and go outside, or at least finish that spreadsheet.
Reading Comments On Productivity Articles
The article’s done, and you got the point. But for some reason, you’re stuck reading through the comments section, where people are arguing about bullet journals. You’re probably not even reading carefully, and you’re probably just scrolling like you’re gonna find the meaning of life in a thread about highlighters. You’re not gonna find it there.
Creating Detailed Goals With No Plan
One weekend, you filled a notebook with goals and labeled everything by category. But that was two months ago, and nothing’s moved, while the list is left in your drawer. You didn’t decide what to do first or when to do it, or even how. It felt productive in the moment, but really, all that setup just tricked you into thinking planning was progress.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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