This article was last updated on December 29, 2015
The internet helps us to do just about everything quicker than before, whether we’re booking a flight to New York or finding out how many degrees of separation there are between Richard Bacon and Richard Gere. And yet at times it can feel like the internet is actually slowing us down with its endless distractions. Online procrastination is a big problem these days, while a little diversion is fine, excessive cyberslacking can have a big impact on your performance if you’re not careful.
Thwarting your instinct to procrastinate is essential if you need the internet for studies or work. These quick tips should help set you on the right path.
Don’t bother with specialist software
I’m sure that there are plenty of you that find tools like StopDistractions and Freedom useful (an old colleague of mine has gone so far as to claim LeechBlock was ‘job-saving’). If you’ve tried them and they work I’m happy for you, but I won’t personally recommend them for two reasons.
Firstly, putting the internet out of bounds completely doesn’t help with my productivity. I’ve tried before collecting every document I need and going offline to do a piece of work, but I inevitably get to a point where I need the internet to complete my task. Then there’s the fact that I find sites like Facebook and Twitter can be genuinely useful. Prohibiting them entirely isn’t nearly as helpful as training yourself to use them in a disciplined way.
Secondly, if like me you find the need to use the best and only the best, you’ll probably trial so many tools that you end up wasting more time than usual.
Social Media Jar
Everyone’s familiar with a swear jar – you say a curse word and you put money in a jar. A social media jar is similar, but I put a little twist on it.
I set aside £5 in 50p coins at the beginning of the day (you can adjust the currency and amount to suit your circumstances). Every transgression sees a coin go in the jar. At the end of the day I give the jar a shake. If there’s silence I save the £5 putting it towards the cost of something I really want, but if there’s any noise those coins go to charity. Every morning the £5 stack is replenished. Ok, so I’m basically bribing myself to work and following the rules requires discipline itself, but I’ve found it’s worked wonders for kicking a destructive Facebook habit.
Now I realise I just said social media sites can be useful – you have to take responsibility and know when you’re using out of a genuine need and when you’re using it because you’re trying to escape from work.
Set tough, but realistic deadlines
I read many years ago that you should set yourself deadlines, and so I did. Those deadlines were useless though because I either gave myself far too much time to complete the task or nowhere near enough.
I’d give myself an hour to write a pitch, find that I was 50% done in 15 minutes and then spend the next 45 minutes distracting myself with anything else – checking the weather, browsing Amazon, or watching YouTube videos. On the other end of the scale I’d give myself an hour for a 90 minute job. As the 50 minute mark approached I’d realised finishing in time was not possible and console myself with procrastination.
Find time to procrastinate
It might sound counter intuitive, but I’ve found that by giving myself set times for regular, short breaks (procrastination time) I actually end up procrastinating less. It must be because when I don’t work in short bursts there’s no end in sight for hours and so I revert to sporadic procrastinating that ends up being even more time consuming. When I spend 20 minutes working followed by 5 minutes of not working I know that those 20 minutes are going to be focused and productive.
Oh, and it’s worth noting that the social media jar has no power over your wallet (or purse) during set procrastination time – so please do tweet away.
Find out what works for you
Ultimately everyone works differently and what works for me might not work for you. Hopefully, however, these will have given you a few ideas about how to stop procrastinating while online – feel free to share your own ideas in the comments below!
Photo credit: Official GDC
