My friend Henry has just informed me of a disturbing time-wasting habit of his, says Atticus. At various times throughout each day he is drawn to YouTube, where he proceeds to do a search for "Real alien footage." Apparently it is compulsive viewing – and with over 2,000 search results, there's a wealth of "alien encounters" for him still to watch. Henry explained the attraction: "Each time, you think to yourself, this might actually be real footage!" It's a habit that he's finding difficult to shake.  

Henry is currently "going it alone" as a stock trader, so I guess that the possibility of something bigger out there than the global economic downturn helps him through the day. It's actually an intriguing idea, that somewhere, hidden amongst the hoaxes, is some genuine world-changing footage of life from another planet – something leaked from Area 51 perhaps. This time-wasting habit of Henry's is marginally better than his other one: doing Google image searches for "cryptozoology", the study of mythical animals. I wouldn't recommend it – as a career or a Google search.

Unfortunately, the internet has provided us with endless possibilities for prevarication and time wasting. I must own up that I too suffer from what has been termed "continuous partial attention." This is where the mind is occupied with a number of jobs and distractions, and so never fully focuses on any individual activity and instead skims over the top of all of them. It's a bit like multi-tasking without the efficiency.

While I've not yet sunk to Henry's depths (though I'm honest enough to admit that it may be difficult to resist tomorrow, when I'm supposed to go through my accounts), it seems that each day I snap out of a daydream to realise that I'm staring at the Telegraph homepage for the twentieth time in an hour and, no, nothing's changed. With the click of a mouse, it's just too easy to get distracted from dull work. Reading something as completely pointless as 10 funniest Amazon review threads on the Telegraph website beats speaking with the solicitor about property law every time. I've provided the link just in case you need it.