So the question is really "how do you not let it waste too much time"? I'm unsure whether the question is loaded or not.
EDIT: here is a more constructive part of this comment, a more general technique to dealing with doing "useless" stuff in general:
Get a small notepad and a pen. Imagine that you have two hours of free time. Now before you're about to do something, write down what you are going to do. Not a plan of the two hours, but what you are going to do right now - like "wash the dishes", which might only take five minutes. The point here is to shake you out of whatever autopilot you are running on, and do things in a more intentional way. When you are done with the dishes, you might write "practice the guitar". After that, maybe "check the front page of proggit, and bookmark the interesting links for later" if you don't have time for that right now, or want to do it later.
Hopefully this will avoid habitual things like the other poster mentioned, like immediately opening a browser and going to proggit or HN once the computer is turned on (I do this too!).
And of course, this technique can be used whenever, not just in your free time. The two hour free time was just an example.
Comments
So the question is really "how do you not let it waste too much time"? I'm unsure whether the question is loaded or not.
EDIT: here is a more constructive part of this comment, a more general technique to dealing with doing "useless" stuff in general:
Get a small notepad and a pen. Imagine that you have two hours of free time. Now before you're about to do something, write down what you are going to do. Not a plan of the two hours, but what you are going to do right now - like "wash the dishes", which might only take five minutes. The point here is to shake you out of whatever autopilot you are running on, and do things in a more intentional way. When you are done with the dishes, you might write "practice the guitar". After that, maybe "check the front page of proggit, and bookmark the interesting links for later" if you don't have time for that right now, or want to do it later.
Hopefully this will avoid habitual things like the other poster mentioned, like immediately opening a browser and going to proggit or HN once the computer is turned on (I do this too!).
And of course, this technique can be used whenever, not just in your free time. The two hour free time was just an example.