1502: Wasted Time

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 14:32, 23 March 2015 by Kynde (talk | contribs) (Explanation: title text)
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Wasted Time
Since it sounds like your time spent typing can't possibly be less productive than your time spent not typing, have you tried typing SLOWER?
Title text: Since it sounds like your time spent typing can't possibly be less productive than your time spent not typing, have you tried typing SLOWER?

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: early draft
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.
Cueball has gotten a new mobile keyboard which allows him to type 30% faster than his old keyboard. White Hat mocks Cueball for obsessing about efficiency too much, but Cueball points out how much less time he'll waste. White Hat counters that he's just seen Cueball open and close Google News five times without reading anything, showing that Cueball may not be as invested in efficient time management as he claims to be. Cueball defends himself by saying that, since he wastes so much time, it's that much more important to use his time well.

Interestingly, in this comic, White Hat appears as the voice of reason to Cueball, an inversion of their typical dynamic. As Cueball and/or Randall's misadventures in time management are a recurring topic (see 974: The General Problem, 1319: Automation, and 1445: Efficiency), this may be a chance to acknowledge that while Cueball may often make a fool of White Hat, he's far from perfect himself.

In the title text White Hat continues to mock Cueball by telling him, that it sound like he spends the time where he doesn't type so inefficient that the time spend typing has to be more efficient. And then suggest that he tries typing even slower to waste less time...

Mobile keyboard efficiency was previously tangentially referenced in 1068: Swiftkey, and Randall's habit of opening news sites only to quickly get bored or distracted was shown in 1411: Loop.

Transcript

Cueball: This new keyboard is like 30% faster! I'm never going back.

White Hat: Good, put those years of horror behind you.

Cueball: C'mon. Sure, sometimes my focus on efficiency doesn't make sense. But we type a lot.

Cueball: That 30% improvement pretty quickly adds up to a huge amount of wasted time rescued.

White Hat: I just watched you open Google News and then close it without reading it five times in a row.

Cueball: The fact that I spend most of my time so stupidly only makes it more important not to waste any here.


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Discussion

If I'm reading the revision history correctly, the Incomplete notice was incomplete when added - if it's a person who added it, then just a typo. If it's a bot, possibly a bug in the bot. Z (talk) 05:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Didn’t Momo tell us, that we can’t save time – and if we you, someone other uses it? ;-). --DaB. (talk) 12:45, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

another one on time management: https://xkcd.com/1205/ sirKitKat (talk) 14:37, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

... which, coincidentally (or not?) is an anagram, numerically speaking, of this one's number. Gearoid (talk) 08:47, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
There where so many comics listed with time management as a theme, so I have created the Time management category and references this instead of a long list of comics (both here and in several of these - so far - 9 comics). --Kynde (talk) 13:47, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm the only one who thinks white hat is annoying? Perhaps one of this days we could see Black hat "taking care" of White hat 173.245.48.29 20:38, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad I don't waste my time doing pointless things like contributing to a wiki about a webcomic! The Goyim speaks (talk) 17:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Anyone else think the characters in this comic are are a little shorter than usual? It may just be the bigger heads, but it's kind of funny. -- LuigiBrick (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)