I work in IT and 70% is downtime with not a single thing to do.. I cant even find anything to do! so like Sub I just study and learnt new troubleshooting solutions and learning Linux.. I weighed up my options but again like Sub said, getting paid and learning what you want is the best balance. ofc your manager will need to be fine with it.
Also speak to your manager, I spoke to mine when I felt I wasn't learning anything new and he allowed me to set up my own rigs, servers and test new tech things out which is great!
The problem here is that I do not work in an IT department.
I'm working with the Marketing team, there's not much that interests me over here.
What's funny is that about a month or two ago someone has issues setting up her monitor, my co worker gave up and asked her to call help desk...I was like ummm I have to figure this out and I did and man it felt great, at that moment I was like, this is what I know I'm good at and I enjoy it, it brings me pleasure fixing something that's broken or setting stuff up.
SharePoint is boooring, making InfoPath forms is even worse.
I've been getting a bunch of calls already, it's tough answering to all of them, going to interviews will be tricky