“It will only take a minute” puts me on a slippery slope toward procrastination.
IT’S APPROACHING MIDNIGHT AND Ari still hasn’t started to work on his report, even though he sat down at his computer at 7 p.m. When he got to his desk earlier that evening, his intention had been to get to work, but he thought, “I’ll just update my Facebook status—it will only take a minute.” Now, hours later, he’s still there.
Issue
I have included this short chapter because Internet-based technologies and other forms of technologically mediated communication, like smartphones, have created a whole new world of time wasting. There is little doubt that our best tools for productivity—computer technologies—are potentially also one of our greatest time wasters. In fact, the title of this chapter was taken from one of the published papers from our research group. In this paper, published more than a decade ago (long before social-networking tools became popular), our participants reported that 47 percent of their time online was spent procrastinating. I think this is a conservative estimate.
I doubt that I have to write very much to convince you that the Internet has the potential to waste time if you want it to. People I know bemoan this fact all the time. The best example I have in relation to this chapter is a reply to one of my Psychology Today blog posts. In response to the “it will only take a minute” theme, an anonymous reader wrote:
im procrastinating.. . . .that’s why im here . . . i just google things im thinking about, like this . . . or like i hear someone hum a familiar tune, so i look up the song to know who sang it . . . i mean that LITERALLY takes a minute, but then that makes me google a couple other things and then it ends up lasting a lot more than a few minutes . . . and i honestly dont realize when i end up reading the wikipedia page of some random disease that some singer had that was related to the singer i was looking up. wait, why was i looking him up? oh right, cos someone at my school was humming a song by him. . . . oh right, school. . . . essay due tomorrow, haven’t started.
like right now, i just realized . . . im commenting on an article.. . . .i wish i could read those articles about my essay and try to get 2000 words on paper in a day.
The thing is, we can end up wasting time even when we do not want to. This is the real problem, and one that we need to identify in order to make change.
I just want to be clear about something. I am not saying we cannot work and play online. Personally, I really enjoy these technologies—I use them intensively, in fact—and I know we will see them grow in importance. What I am emphasizing is that we can waste time in unexpected and unanticipated ways with these technologies when we don’t want to. This is the issue. These technologies are particularly problematic when it comes to self-regulation and self-regulation failure.
In the scenario above, Ari did plan to work on his report. He got to his desk as planned. What happened?
Ari made a rational decision over an irrationally short period of time. Although it is correct that it might take only a minute to “update my Facebook page,” a minute later Ari faced the same decision. Of course, as we learned in Chapter 5, our thinking can let us down here. We can rationalize yet another minute of delay, as another minute will certainly not compromise the report writing. It is an intransitive preference at its best, isn’t it? At midnight, Ari recognizes that it is preferable to act much sooner than he has (even though each minute prior to that, he preferred to delay just a little more).
This issue of rational decisions over irrationally short periods of time, combined with problems in our thinking like intransitive preferences, is not the only reason that the Internet and social networking in particular are potentially so hazardous to our goal pursuit. There are other reasons that we are prone to procrastinate online.
STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE
Although I discuss the procrastination superhighway as a separate chapter in this book, the principles for change are not really that different. They may just be a whole lot less appealing. For example, we have already addressed the notion of minimizing distractions when we discussed impulsivity. Minimizing distractions is part of that predecision to keep us on task.
Minimizing distractions is an important part of curbing our online procrastination. To stay really connected to our goal pursuit, we need to disconnect from potential distractions like social-networking tools. This means that we should not have Facebook, Twitter, email, or whatever your favorite suite of tools is running in the background on your computer or smartphone while you are working. Shut them off.
Ouch. I know—it is really tempting to find some excuse to keep it a “business as usual” approach here, but if you are committed to reducing your procrastination, this is something you really need to do. You must shut off everything except the program you need on your computer to do the task at hand. This means you can plan your “ebreaks” more consciously—again, this is an example of predecisions that help us break unconscious habits. Procrastination is certainly a habit for many of us.
This strategy of reducing distractions makes it more obvious when you are turning away from your goal pursuit to pursue some other task. Your alternative and potentially rewarding alternative tasks are no longer only a click away. A little more effort provides time for you to think if this is really what you want to do. Do you really want to abandon your goal right now? Probably not.
There have been all sorts of tools and “apps” designed to help people regulate their Internet use more. Common current examples include tools that lock you out of your email or record what applications you are using and for how long. These may be helpful to you, but techniques and technologies can never be a substitute for a commitment to change.
I think it is appropriate to end this final chapter where I began our consideration of why we procrastinate—giving in to feel good. Giving in to feel good is a big piece of the procrastination puzzle, and the Internet provides lots and lots of short-term, but specious, rewards to which we can give in to feel good.
With a click or two we can leave the task that we feel bad about and seek immediate mood repair. If you understand that this is what you are doing, you are truly on the road to change.
That does not mean that this is easy, and I turn now to some thoughts about the road ahead. It is a journey that is often described as “two steps forward, one step back.”