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Yes, it happens to me, too: Whenever I want to start a new task (e.g., writing a newsletter edition like this one), I feel a strong urge to do something else. Even though I keep my phone in another room while working, the internet is still screaming at me:
Maybe I should check my email?
I should check my stats at [platform]!
Why not watch this cool new podcast episode?
It’s hard to resist this urge sometimes, and it’s what we call procrastination: Instead of working on an intended task, we put it off and do something else. (Just for clarification: It’s not about delaying tasks on purpose, for example, because you need to rest or because you planned to work on a task in limited daily chunks.)
Everybody knows that delaying important tasks will affect us in the long run, but the short-term reward is tempting. And with all the technology around us, resisting temptations is getting harder and harder.
A new study addressed this exact issue: how disconnection from technology could help us procrastinate less. Let’s dive into the study and its valuable findings!
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About the study
The authors investigated whether digital disconnection is associated with reduced procrastination in daily life.
237 adults (18-35 years) received up to 5 mini surveys/day on their phones over 2 weeks.
Here’s what the authors measured in each mini survey:
Procrastination: participants rated how strongly they agreed with the following statement: “In the last two hours, I needlessly delayed working on a task.”
Goal conflict: participants evaluated the following question: "In the last two hours, how much did your use of digital media conflict with other important goals such as work, studying, interactions, sports, etc.?”
Digital disconnection: Participants indicated whether they were deliberately limiting their digital media use.
The authors also measured the participants’ self-control using a questionnaire (administered only once), i.e., how well they generally manage to control themselves, pursue their goals, and resist temptations and distractions.
The results
You might have already expected it: Digital disconnection was associated with reduced procrastination. And that wasn’t only true for a specific moment, but also a few hours later.
When goal conflict was high, people reported more procrastination but also more attempts to disconnect. In other words, the moments that trigger more procrastination are also the moments when people take more action to reduce it.
Additionally, people with high self-control exhibited more digital disconnection behaviors than those who struggled with self-control.
Digital disconnection can happen at different levels. In the present study, the following levels were associated with reduced procrastination:
Device level: Not using the device (as in my “phone in another room” example)
Application level: Not using a specific application (e.g., your email app, YouTube, …)
Feature level: Turning off features (e.g., notifications)
Other disconnection techniques (such as focusing only on a certain type of content on a platform while ignoring the rest) weren’t associated with reduced procrastination.
What we can learn from these results (and a few caveats)
This study can only establish associations, not causality. Plus, it was a smartphone-based study, which makes digital disconnection difficult for participants because they received survey notifications up to 5x/day on their phones.
Still, the study helps us understand procrastination a little better and do something about it.
On the one hand, you should be aware that the stronger the goal conflict (i.e., the urge to do something now but that puts your long-term goals at risk), the more likely you are to procrastinate. This knowledge is power because you can use tools to prevent the conflicts from getting too strong to resist. The key is to arrange your environment for success.
For me, this means:
Phone in another room while working
Some apps like Instagram only work on my phone, I don’t use them before noon, and I have a daily 30-minute limit for using them (see here how to set that up on IG!)
Not opening my email or other “social” stuff on my computer while I’m focusing on a task (here’s where I fail the most)
Reducing procrastination has a lot to do with how you design your environment and less with willpower (an earlier issue covers this in more detail).
Finally, procrastination is also a sign you’re human, so eliminating it completely is unrealistic anyway. But you can reduce it to protect your long-term goals, and one key strategy is digital disconnection.
That’s it for today!
And now?
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Until next time!
Best wishes,
Patricia (Dr. Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com
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