Three rules for social media usage

As part of my on-going quest to utilise the benefits of the internet without succumbing to the adverse effects, I decided to create some personal rules to guide my actions. I’ll share them here in case you may find them helpful:

(1) If there’s a chance it will lead to procrastination, don’t do it.

At the moment when I am about to do something (“I’ll just check my emails” or “I’ll just see what the football score was”), I ask myself: Is there a chance this will lead to procrastination?

I find the context is more relevant than the task itself. If I’m really enjoying a project and want to get back to working on it, checking Sky Sports Football probably isn’t going to cost a huge amount of time. However, if I’m really struggling with some writing, or with a piece of code, then even banal tasks can be an attractive escape.

I often find impulsive procrastination starts out as a small task (“I’ll just check X”) which then builds into procrastination momentum. I find that by asking myself this question before I actually do the procrastination-type task, I can curb the impulse before any momentum is built.

(2) Write it down before logging in

There have been many occasions where I’ve logged onto one or another social media account with a ‘legitimate’ intention of sharing something I’ve worked on, but then forgetting it for long enough to get swept up in all the juicy social media on-goings.

A simple approach that I’ve found helpful for this is to write down exactly what I’m going to do before I log in. If I’m sharing a post on LinkedIn, for example, I will have written everything out in advance - so that I’m not typing into the compose box with a news feed below and notifications popping up. I will simply log in, copy and paste, then log back out again (at least, in theory).

(3) Save it for later

When I’m working on a particular task, I’ll keep a sheet of paper on the desk within arms reach. When an idea for something enters my mind that’s unrelated to (or at least not a core component of) my current task, I will make a note of it on the paper.

Then, at an appropriate time later in the day, I will just batch process all the tasks that I wrote on that sheet of paper.

So all-in-all, nothing super ground breaking. Mostly just small habits that I’ve found have reliably reduced my probability of impulsive internet-based procrastination.

I’m definite not ‘there’ yet with this and am still looking for ways to improve. I would genuinely be really interested to hear what sorts of things you have tried or found helpful, any recommended books or blogs you may have, so feel free to reply.