Do you often wonder how time flies when you are on your phone? Did you push the essential tasks to a corner and spent that time on your phone playing a game, on social media, or watching a YouTube video/videos. Don’t worry, 20% of individuals of the total world population have the same story as you.
Along with other side effects of social media, we have fell victim to one more habit because of it; Procrastination. We find ourselves hooked to our phones while missing deadlines of important tasks or simply pushing some other non-essential tasks. Researchers say that due to procrastination, people are prone to poor performances, missing appointments and even losing jobs.
What Is Procrastination?
As per Wikipedia, Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished by a certain deadline. It could be further stated as a habitual or intentional delay of starting or finishing a task despite knowing it might have negative consequences.
In simpler words, you know it is very crucial to complete an assignment that is due on a particular date, but you keep putting it off until the end by doing the unnecessary tasks and start it only a few hours before the due date.
Some people might call it laziness. But laziness is when you have no intention to do anything, contrary to procrastinating when you have 100% intention of doing the task.
I would not say that it is a recent issue that came into existence with the onset of digital media, but the percentage drastically increased from 5% to 26% in the last 30 years(Source: https://brandongaille.com/17-lazy-procrastination-statistics/), with the digital media’s major role in this.
Young people are drastically more prone to procrastinate than the older generation. A piece of information posted on Brandongaille.com states that 85-90% of the students have problems related to procrastination. 43% of students claim that it has become second nature to them. (a link to the article here)
Why Do We Procrastinate?
While I was procrastinating to write this blog article, I clicked on Matt D’Avella’s recent video about procrastination. And the answer was right there. There are only two reasons for that continuous putting off:-
The Task At Hand Is Too Boring.
If it is too boring, you know it too well and probably you know that you can do it at the last minute too. So, you keep on pushing it to the end until you cannot push it anymore.
The Task Is Too Difficult.
We are all about rewards. We only want to do something that gives us pleasure at the moment and run away from tasks that will require us to do work. Spending hours scrolling through endless Instagram stories or YouTube videos seems comforting at that moment whereas getting up and completing a task is a punishment.
In my case, I have written an article many times, hence I took it too easily. I decided to do be more motivated before I start writing, as Timothy A. Pychyl, Ph.D. says, “We Give In To Feel Good.”
How To Overcome Procrastination??
- Track yourself:- The first step is to track things. Make a calendar of your daily screen time, even if it is for a few minutes. Also, make a note of the pending tasks. When I realize that things are getting out of my hand, or when my screen-time exceeds 2 hours, It is time for me to step back. I delete everything and take a break from apps like Instagram, YouTube etc. Nowadays, I use social media to motivate myself or for the means of my blog articles only.
- Hold yourself accountable:- After tracking it for a few weeks, sit and ask yourself, everything I have scrolled down, Is it worth the hours and hours that I have spent on it? Is there anything better and valuable I could have done? If yes, you got a reason to avoid procrastination. If no, then by all means get back to the endless scrolling.
- The environment is the key:- You are a product of your environment. I agree that motivation works, but only to a certain extent. When I was living with my friends, no matter how much I tried, I could not follow any diet plans. None of them was as determined as much as I was to lose weight. I always gave in when there was fast food to eat every other day. When I started living with my mother who is also trying to lose some weight, we both agreed on one diet plan and have been consistently following it for more than a month. So, if you keep the company of those friends whose entire life rotates around social media, your battle will be tougher my friend!!
- 2-minute rule:- James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits has an entire chapter dedicated to this rule. 2 minutes is the time when we are deciding our next steps in the entire day. When you go home, there is a decisive moment in which you choose between sitting on the sofa and watch Netflix, or change and go to the gym. If in those 2 minutes you change, half of the work is done. You will go to the gym for sure. If you go to the gym, you will exercise. Hence, you chose to stay healthy over being sluggish in 2 minutes. The same applies to each and every decision of the day. Take control of your every day, each hour, and each minute with this rule.
- Treat yourself:- It is really important to pat your own back and treat yourself from time to time. Keep social media as a treat of your life. Lets put it in this way, promise yourself to open a social media app only after you finish 1 essential task, and that too for a limited time. You can set an alarm to trace that time. After various trials, you will develop a habit to open an app after you have completed a task. Wouldn’t that be amazing? We would be able to do so much!
I don’t know about you guys, but I feel prisoner of social media. It feels unhealthy to scroll my phone for more than half an hour. It is very important to realize how badly it is affecting us, especially our productivity. Better stop before it is too late to make up for the lost time!!
True and inspiring .. I will try to follow for sure..Thanks for inspiring