10.

Wikipedia
When you need to look up a quick fact or double-check some stats, Wikipedia can be a very useful tool. It’s also very addicting, especially if you become involved in contributing to the articles. But even if you don’t contribute, reading one article leads to reading another, which leads to another ... and there’s your whole day. The lure of soaking up useless facts while you’re supposed to be getting work done is sometimes overwhelming.

9.

Games
Solitaire was distracting enough, but now there is a whole web full of games to try. If you’re a fan of old school arcade games, you can find Pacman, Tetris, Frogger, Super Mario, etc. online. There are also hundreds of different card games available online. If you prefer a game with a bit more action you can find shoot-em ups, role-playing games, racing games and puzzle games. If you find yourself addicted to a particular game, some sites let you download it and play it at anytime. You can even play games through Facebook or by downloading an app for your mobile phone.

8.

Chatting
While instant messaging can be a useful intra-office tool, it can also be a time-waster, especially if you’re using personal chatting programs on Gmail, Facebook or AIM. At work, there’s always someone with a lot less to do who will tempt you into a chat marathon. While you can put your status as “away” or “busy”, you will still be interrupted by new messages, new people coming online, and new people trying to get your attention. Make your time yours by closing your chat client and only opening it when you really need to chat.

Shopping
Want some new stuff or some slightly used stuff? Sites like Amazon, eBay and Craigslist are a great way to get whatever you are looking for at a price you can live with and can definitely waste time. While the Craigslist site is low-tech, you can waste time looking for a job, finding an apartment, meeting your future spouse, and selling your old dinette set. eBay is another time-trap -- once you decide to buy an item the site, it can be hard to look away because you don’t want to be outbid. On Amazon, you can find and buy almost anything -- books, music, guitars, shoes and so much more.

Sports
You can spend a lot of time each day checking on scores, fantasy football stats, watching the action, watching replays, reading commentaries and chatting on sports forums. For fantasy sports, there are there countless sites and services designed to help fans organize and manage leagues, and hundreds of books and newsletters devoted to strategy and predictions. As with any passion, sports can take up a large chunk of time if not properly managed.

YouTube
You can spend hours upon hours watching cool stuff on YouTube, as every video has a dozen other related ones to get you to stay on the site. A two-minute video turns into watching a four-minute video and then a three-minute video. And that really works to waste time. Once you start clicking it’s difficult to stop.

News
Some people are plugged into national news all day long, while others spend their time reading celebrity news. Britney, Lindsay and Paris make for easy time-wasting on sites like Perez Hilton, DListed and TMZ. One way to organize your favorite news and blogs is to use an RSS feed reader such as Google Reader. But that too can get out of hand -- if you have 100+ RSS feeds to read every day, you’ll spend a lot of time with your feed reader. And any time you feel like procrastinating, you can open up the feed reader and see what new posts have been published. To avoid this, limit your feed reading to once a day and cut your feeds down to a minimum.

Personal E-mail
E-mail can be a very productive tool for work, but when you start communicating through personal Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts at work, e-mail can become a huge time-waster. It can be addictive and can lead to putting off work if you check your email at least four times per hour and reply to everything.

Twitter
Twitter starts out with the seemingly harmless question of “What’s happening?” Seems like a simple idea, until it starts to consume your day because you’re frequently telling other people what you’re doing and reading what others are doing, while also looking at photos and reading articles people tweet. Trying to compose a meaningful message in 140 characters or less can also turn into a chore, especially when you end up slicing and dicing your tweets with surgical precision, trying to shave off a character or two and not change the meaning of your tweet. Reading the emails that tell you who is following you can even be a big time suck. If you are the type of person who is constantly checking emails just in case you received another one, then you may be the type of person who compulsively checks for replies -- this also wastes time. Paying attention to what is being said about you or your company on Twitter and throughout the social media-sphere is smart, but Twitter can sometimes stop you from getting important things done.

Facebook
Facebook and other social networking sites like LinkedIn and MySpace offer many ways to waste time. In addition to reconnecting with old friends or colleagues, sharing links and posting your latest thoughts, Facebook also allows you to post picture galleries, create quizzes and give presents. Even after checking up on your friends’ photo galleries and telling your friends where you are and what you’re doing (hopefully you say you’re at work working), you still have to check for wall comments and play games (see #9). In addition, businesses are now using Facebook to get across their messages and new products. As more and more people join these sites, the average person’s profile is becoming stuffed with add-ons and the amount of time needed to service them grows.