The specific thing you spend the most time doing instead of the actual job you're being paid to do is your new profession. What's your new job title?

weirdly I'm still a Linux administrator but with way more fun services to maintain.
- Can I ask how you got a job as a Linux administrator?
  
  Easy, you mention you want to use BSD and the other IT guys give you that look.
  
  I'm not a Linux admin, but I think there are certifications you can get and exams you can take to show you understand stuff about shell scripting and related topics, if that's what you're interested in.
  I think they have questions like "Make it so a welcome message and the time display when someone logs into your Linux server", among other, harder things.
  I don't know a huge amount about the job market, but just saying you have those kinds of skills on your CV along with a bit of experience in some other tech/coding/data stuff might even be enough.
  
  Been using Linux for 25 years so i don't know if it's comparable to today but ironically it was setting up game servers for fun. Then i applied for a game sever hosting provider. i think they have mostly died out now. Then just kinda jumped over to web hosting this was before cloud was a thing. Then kinda moved into internal IT running corporate IT. The nice thing being 100% Linux admin i don't have to mess with AD and FSMO. Even though I know how to i keep quiet about that.

Huh, I now get paid to waste time staring at the internet. Neat, I guess?
- Urgh, better than being paid to start online fights. Your mother?
  
  MY MOTHER'S A SAINT

'office/M365 tutor for geriatrics'
Compared to actual title
"Director of Information Systems"
Every day makes me understand Marvin from HHGTTG more and more.
- I feel that in my soul. I'm a sysadmin, however it's mostly password resets 🥲
- Same, but was a library clerk that was for "everything even vaguely computer-tasky for geriatrics and people 20+ who never touched a computer and don't even know how their $3000 phone works."
  Yeah I had a plan when I quit: Quitting was the plan. Instant relief of so many mental symptoms I could name and some I probably couldn't lol. Don't care what happens now. Anything is better than that.
- Well at least you are probably getting paid to do that, and it shouldn't be all that hard to do if you don't get frustrated easily.

RN = Refreshments and Narcotics
- Are you me?

Director of building Magic the Gathering commander decks but not actually playing them
- I feel you. Moxfield is my greatest enemy.

Greeeeat, now I'm jerking off someone for money.
Jokes aside, writing is the predominant single activity I engage in that's in the spirit of the question, and I've made some money doing it here and there. But it was never my job.

As an Uber driver, I do everything I can to put people at ease. I end up in many deep, heartfelt conversations with my passengers. I introduce people to new music, and spread information about homeless assistance programs and other resources around the Denver area.
Uber is the platform from which I do my work as a community supporter.
I do Uber my own way, according to my vision. I am an Uber Mensch.

Professional slanderer of programming languages.
I've spent more time than I care to admit
- Hate the player not the game.

You guys have time for other things? I do my job and can fill my day with that. I sometimes have to stand my ground to make other people understand that no, I cannot do this additional tasks everyday, I don't have the time for that.
95% of the time it is busy. The other 5% I use to catch up with the stuff I have no time for when it is busy.
- If I didn't make time to do anything besides work and sleep like that I would literally go insane after about 2 weeks
  
  Well that is when I am at work. My work times are clearly defined and when the time is over, I go home. So I am limited to about 8 hours in a day, with a very rare exception of 15 minutes longer.
  After work and in the weekends I still have time to chill, but at work I have no downtime except for breaks. Luckily my boss also knows how busy we are and doesn't complain if I cannot get everything finished, he just tells me what is a priority and what not.
  That is really helpful for the stress levels, but it is still a pretty stressful job.

Professional Cat Petter! 😻

Professional YouTube Watcher or Professional Hobbyist Language Learner.

Guitarist/cross stitcher, with a side job as a professional TV watcher lol

Professional manual analysis of herbal terpinoid content (ignition-form expert).

I'm a professional social media browser.
I think I'd actually kill myself.

Linux admin 😌

There was this Russian developer who got jailed for something a couple years back. I've looked up his website and it was a giant field of mines. Up to the challenge, I've proceeded for weeks to try to clear it during work hours. Finally managed and all I got was something akin to a laugh.wav as a reward.
Guess I'm a minesweeper.
- I am so curious. Tell me more about this? Can you share a link? What are the mines like- I’ve seen devs do escape room style challenges where you’re solving a progressive puzzle using dev tools, is it like that?

Professional sleeper.
That should pretty much be the answer for anyone with a full-time job.
- professional internet browserist. there are 16 hours between sleeping and multitasking.
- Might have misunderstood the wording - unless you do a lot of sleeping during working hours?
  
  Oh, you mean something you do at your job that isn't actually your job. In that case eating launch? Though that's technically break time.
- I get the spirit here but not sure I agree that it MUST be true mathematically.
  A full time job is 32+ hours a week. Even if I use the American 40, that's still only 23% of the week not counting vacation or holiday.
  Most people don't get more then 8 hours off sleep a night. That's 1/3 the day. 43% of the week for everything else.
  That's enough time for you to do something more than sleep or work. Then count in time for vacation and holiday and if you don't sleep eight hours every night. And if you do stuff at work that isn't necessarily in your job title.
  Due to my meds I can only sleep 4-5 hours a night.
  
  My reasoning was that you sleep some amount of time every single day (let's say 6h). I doubt that many people will spend 6h on one specific activity/hobby every single day.

~~I really don't want to play Arma professionally~~ I misunderstood the question

Sleeping

Power point archivist and people tracker downer!

I basically do farming at the level of a second job, so I suppose it would be that even though I don't do it commercially (yet).
- How is this going, where do you live, and what do you grow? I hobby-garden, have more space to plant and wouldn't mind selling some of it but afraid of growing too much of one thing and throwing everything out of whack.
  
  I live in a rural area in northern Japan.
  We just started a few months ago (we were supposed to get the house last year but, due to various factors, we couldn't take possession and get moved in until just before April). We're definitely learning a lot about farming and what works for our land and environment but, because of the time we got the house, we've been super rushed. I think we'll do better next year.
  My goal is to position myself to deal with a lot of products foreigners living in Japan want and have trouble getting. That's a lot of peppers, different types of beans, etc.

Current Job title: programmer
Effective job title: Sysadmin.

One thing I spend some time on is building out my Lego city.
- Photo time!
- I always wondered if people still make quirky Lego cities like the old days
  
  Lego makes a lot of sets designed to be a city. The problem is that you need a full room to build out a city.
  I've built a mini city on the scale that they released the mini modular set as. It is on the scale that this guy made his sets: https://legominimodularguy.blogspot.com
  I think my city is better, though.

Linux Sysadmin. Funnily enough, that's the career I'm in after procrastinating a lot during my ecology studies.
- Being a tech savvy person in a science field is a one way trip to becoming sysadmin accidentally.

Human Lemming

Professional flight simulator pilot. I can fly a Boeing 737, 747, 777, 787, Airbus A300, A310, A320, McDonnell Douglas MD-11, and BAe 146, as long as there are no system failures and I can access my Navigraph charts.
Time compression would be great for those long haul flights as well. NYC to Tokyo in a few hours at 4x time would be sweet.

Is this specifically things we do during work hours more than our actual job? Or what we choose to do with our free time?
Cause if it's slacking off at work, sadly, I am probably now a professional Solitaire player. If it's in my free time... Well, my ADHD keeps me hopping from activity to activity so often let's just call it "Special Projects Manager"...

Coffee taster..
- Second this, other than Starbucks, coffee is pretty crappy. Any places worth checking out will be highly appreciated
  
  I live in a medium sized US city, and even here, StarBucks is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Where do you live that StarBucks is the best?
  Edit: Not throwing shade, genuinely curious. I had this situation in my hometown. But India is a tea-centric culture, so it's understandable.
  
  I drink homemade mixes, Starbucks it's good also, check out YouTube for different kinds of homemade mixes there are some which taste pretty good made with instant coffee.

Without looking too far my prediction is to see 2 varations of replies mostly:
1.) I do something completely unrelated and enjoyable because my job is chill, or I'm good at it, and so on...
2.) I actually do my boss's job and maybe even their bosses' jobs,, because I actually do the work that gets done, but am still paid at peon-level.

Professional Kingdom of Loathing player, I guess! I may spend more time on other things, but other than biological necessities, KoL is the only thing I do every day no matter where I am 😁
- I gave up in my second month of grinding for rare vertebrae for the Bone Dragon. Glad to know more patient people have fun with KoL. GLHF
  
  Using KolMafia for configurable automation and tons of other helpful scripts and the wiki to look stuff up helps tremendously! If I had to go without either, I'd probably burn out pretty fast too lol

I'm a pro TTRPG think-abouter... Or a pro Pathfinder prepper.

Please refer to me as Total War XMunk in the future. I shall reign terror upon this land.
Well, either that or I'm now a professional pilgrim... gosh, I wish you could get paid for just walking a lot.

I'm a professional drinker.
- Of water, right?
  Right?

Either a Game Developer or a Writer. If only...
- Be the change you want to see, my friend.
  
  I'm trying, I'm trying.

VR game level designer. Neat!

Professional Guinea pig Petter

Pro golfer or sword fighter. Can't complain

Sysadmin cosplayer or Barista.

Well, I would be a comic book creator... With video game screenshots.

I’m a nanny! 😄

Professional click hero

Catcher of grasshoppers for my chickens. Waterer of trees. Fermenteer.

Tobacconist and Sommelier.

Tracing shapes & cutting them out.
It's like 20% sewing, the other 80% being planning, geometry, resource management, tracing, and cutting.
And I often discover that I'm still bad at math! Pain. 🫠

Researcher, or Lemmy account manager.

Dad

I really hope everyone’s answer is professional sleeper, otherwise we have some very unhealthy people.
- You misread the prompt, it's during work hours, not the whole day. Unless we'd expect people to sleep during work hours instead of the rest of the day to be healthy.