Ways the World Wide Web Allows Me to Procrastinate. Food for Thought, but You Should Do Something Productive Instead of Reading This.

Image via CrunchBase

I could take this one step further and make it a Facebook meme, but I do have a life. Somewhere around here. Backed up on a flash drive. If I remembered to back it up. Dang, I really need to back up more often.

How many of these have you done within the last day? Subtract points if your living actually depends on any of these. Add points if you have no product or service you market online.

1. Logged onto Twitter and read random bits of noise from strangers.
2. Responded to these random bits with your own witty observation.
3. Checked and responded on a second (or third or fourth) Twitter account you also manage.
4. Followed a link someone tweeted.
5. Retweeted a link (extra points if you changed someone else’s short URL to your own system so you can track clickthroughs).
6. Searched on Twitter or any related utility to find interesting people to follow.
7. Updated your Facebook status. (bonus point for doing this several times a day)
8. Written on someone’s Facebook wall.
9. Commented on someone’s update.
10. Commented on someone’s comment on someone else’s update.
11. Did one of those ubiquitous Facebook lists.
12. Tagged friends with said ubiquitous list.
13. Responded to a tag from a friend with another ubiquitous list.
14. (awarded yourself points in your head for having an excuse to use ubiquitous everywhere.)
15. Browsed the Facebook “People You May Know” list and sent out friend requests.
16. Started a blog post.
17. Finished a blog post.
18. Actually posted a blog post.
19. Commented on someone else’s blog.
20. Tweeted a link to your blog.
21. Tweeted a link to someone else’s blog.
22. Clicked “Mark All As Read” in Google Reader because you have several hundred unread blog posts waiting for you.
23. Read something in Google Reader, then clicked on it to read it at the original site, then followed links to other posts, then forgotten where you were and closed the tab without remembering to back up to the post you really, really wanted to tweet about, so now you have to go back to Google Reader and find it again.
24. Favorited, shared, stumbled upon, or whatever-ed anything, anywhere.
25. Checked your work email junk folder.
26. Reviewed and deleted email messages because your IT system sent you one of those annoying messages about how much mail you have stored on the server.
27. Checked your personal email spam folder.
28. Spent time on Facebook or Twitter to avoid looking at your personal email account because of the backlog.
29. Responded to someone’s whitelisting email so your email account can get through to that email account. So you can get more email. Think about this.

Okay, now that you’ve spent time on this, admit it: You’re going to turn it into a blog post, post it on Facebook, tweet about it, or email a link to a friend.

What color are your kids’ eyes again?

And admit it—it’s bothering you that this list has an odd number of items, because you now think everything in a list should have 5, 7, 10, 20, 50, or 100 entries.

Admit a little bit more--you're waiting for some kind of rankings based on accumulated points, or instructions for what you're supposed to do with your point total. You might just reflect on it. And check your kids' eyes.