Time

A few weeks ago, I noticed that I was visiting a particular web site every day. This was odd, because the site is updated exactly once per week (on Friday.) Why did I feel compelled to visit the site on Tuesday at 11:50PM? So I decided to keep track of my browsing habits. Of the sites I visit regularly, 11 are updated daily, 9 are updated weekly, and a dozen or so are updated less than weekly. There is nothing unusual about these statistics, but here's the part that freaks me out: I visit every one of these sites EVERY DAY. Some of them I visit TWICE PER DAY. Last Thursday, I made 38 visits to sites which were guaranteed to have the same content as on my previous visit. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have had similar browsing habits for most of the last decade. I did some quick math: Call it 20 "wasted" visits per day, 3 seconds per visit, 365 days per year, 10 years. That's just over 60 HOURS of my life, gone. And I was being generous with some of those numbers. I rearranged my IE favorites folder to put each site in an appropriate category, but as I sit here typing this entry (6:51PM, Saturday, February 11, 2006), I still feel an absurd desire to check my "Updated Every Monday" category. Insanity!