I wrote a book. Always looked busy. Was great!

Do online courses in areas of your interest.

Would you be able to create even more work for yourself and get paid more for doing it? Like suggesting things to be done, or doing side projects?

Mastubate in the toilet like every other sane person ?

If I'm really bored I do actual work.

I worked a factory job for several years that had nearly unrestricted internet and the ability to install programs. There's a LOT of options here depending on your technical skill and what you're able to get away with. One of my favs was setting up a remote connection to my home network so I could work on project there without much fuss on the work computers and was easy to just close the connection if needed.

Also games. I played a lot of games... even designed some with all the time we had.

Learning web development was my most productive though; I was able to contribute to the company and got promoted to IT which launched my career to where I am now.

Browsing lemmy and watching TV shows / youtube.

Learn how to code

There is always more documentation to update sadly.
There is always old customer data to remove. I am currently working on a plan to remove the vxlan and firewall sub interfaces for a customer that was lost 3 years ago.

I write really dumb powershell scripts. One throws up a GUI with a picture of a wizard holding a magic 8-ball, clicking the 8-ball gives a random response from a list of responses. It was kind of fun figuring out how to store images in the script (just went with base64)...

Its always a fun way to guess if the meeting with M$ is going to be beneficial or not.

I have no downtime like that. Quite the contrary. I have too much work, too many responsibility, and want to fix and improve things that annoy me which adds more.

I do visit programming.dev, which is a distraction, but tangential in my field of work, sometimes directly useful.

What i do: oomscroll Lemmy, take smoke breaks, do "the little stuff" like organizing documents after your lazy coworkers, take a walk, read books and hop on codeacademy. Still - this freedom gets stale quickly because the most stressful part becomes pretending to look busy

Your seeing it for me.

That and ebooks/royal road/audiobooks via phone. Just make it look kinda like work and you should be good.

Alternatively, try to learn something new. Theres a lot of online resources out there!

At a customer service job I'd read whole books in the browser. Just keep the window small and it looks pretty inconspicuous.

Now I work from home so I look at Lemmy and such on my phone.

I have a hard rule of never playing video games on the clock because that's a slippery slope.

Any way you can learn new skills or get certs while you work? Take on a project to put on your resume? Help others? Hopefully, you will find something that challenges you or make work more appealing during your day?

You don't. I'd ask my lead/supervisor if there is any other item to work on. Doing this consistently will get you promoted.

Sometimes I chat with coworkers. I work in IT so sometimes I go on a rabbithole of random computer stuff. Usually though, I don't have enough time to "kill".

Chess puzzles. Reading about my hobbies.

When I was still working in an office I used to listen to a lot of podcasts.

Im here. Hello. Currently working.

I've spent a lot of time ruminating on the state of society and mourning the loss of better days.

• see if there's literally anything else you can do to improve or polish what you just worked on
• set if there's anyone else that might need help with their work or who you can mentor
• learn new things you can put on your resume it that will help you in your job
• learn stuff in general that isn't directly work related, but maybe related to your next job/what you would like to work with

I read wikipedia or fun books(novels) from zlib/annas. Also some lemmy and hn.

By doom scrolling on Lemmy and Reddit.

I check other job listing.

I walk around the shop and bullshit with others, maybe clean or organize stuff. Or help build panels if I'm caught up on testing. We're so busy right now tho those days are kind of long gone. Currently working overtime indefinitely til like 2027 at least.

When I'm done I go home. Benefits of being self-employed.

This wasn't ever much of an issue in my previous job either. Work fills the time given for it. If there's literally nothing to do then I'd browse reddit/Lemmy or watch YouTube videos.

When I work in office settings I usually set pace based on what I need to accomplish, and use any extra time to do proper reviews of my work.

this was how I got my wow addiction back in 2005

Lately, Clash Royale