The Internet is particularly insidious in this respect, because reading HN, looking at the NYT, and so forth can feel work-like without actually accomplishing anything substantial.
It's true, but it also builds vague background knowledge in a hard-to-quantify way (and I'm honestly not sure how it stacks up to the time invested). I very frequently find myself drawing on knowledge that I ran across during internet time-wasting, whether it was a relevant article I found on HN, or a Wikipedia article I found in one of those random-walk-through-link sessions (or the journal articles I found via the Wikipedia articles...). On the other hand, I also spend a lot of time "keeping up with the internet", so it's not free. But it's certainly shown up in papers I've published in my day job.
It's an interesting tradeoff; I'd say I'm less concentrated and diligent than most of my colleagues on what I'm "supposed to be doing", but I'm also more broadly aware of what's going on outside of our little academic bubble. They get more done on their main projects, but I'm the person to come to if you want to be pointed to relevant articles/libraries/demos/posts on $topic_foo. It's not even so much that it saves me time researching later, as that I'm not sure I'd even be able to make some of the cross-connections between subjects without this undirected information-gathering.
It's true, but it also builds vague background knowledge in a hard-to-quantify way (and I'm honestly not sure how it stacks up to the time invested). I very frequently find myself drawing on knowledge that I ran across during internet time-wasting, whether it was a relevant article I found on HN, or a Wikipedia article I found in one of those random-walk-through-link sessions (or the journal articles I found via the Wikipedia articles...). On the other hand, I also spend a lot of time "keeping up with the internet", so it's not free. But it's certainly shown up in papers I've published in my day job.
It's an interesting tradeoff; I'd say I'm less concentrated and diligent than most of my colleagues on what I'm "supposed to be doing", but I'm also more broadly aware of what's going on outside of our little academic bubble. They get more done on their main projects, but I'm the person to come to if you want to be pointed to relevant articles/libraries/demos/posts on $topic_foo. It's not even so much that it saves me time researching later, as that I'm not sure I'd even be able to make some of the cross-connections between subjects without this undirected information-gathering.