Managing Procrastination on Social Networking Sites: The D-Crastinate Method

Procrastination refers to the voluntary avoidance or postponement of action that needs to be taken, that results in negative consequences such as low academic performance, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Previous work has demonstrated the role of social networking site (SNS) design in users’ procrastination and revealed several types of procrastination on SNS. In this work, we propose a method to combat procrastination on SNS (D-Crastinate). We present the theories and approaches that informed the design of D-Crastinate method and its stages. The method is meant to help users to identify the type of procrastination they experience and the SNS features that contribute to that procrastination. Then, based on the results of this phase, a set of customised countermeasures are suggested for each user with guidelines on how to apply them. To evaluate our D-Crastinate method, we utilised a mixed-method approach that included a focus group, diary study and survey. We evaluate the method in terms of its clarity, coverage, efficiency, acceptance and whether it helps to increase users’ consciousness and management of their own procrastination. The evaluation study involved participants who self-declared that they frequently procrastinate on SNS. The results showed a positive impact of D-Crastinate in increasing participants’ awareness and control over their procrastination and, hence, enhancing their digital wellbeing.


What is procrastination?
Procrastination is a voluntary delay, a way of avoiding tasks that need to be accomplished but which someone doesn't perhaps want to do.
When someone procrastinates too much it can lead to negative consequences.

Consequences
Low productivity Low academic performance Anxiety Work-related stress

D-Crastinate Stages
The following table summarises the D-Crastinate method and its stages:

Education
• Increase your awareness about procrastination and how it happens in general.
• Help you to understand why you procrastinate. • • Help you to become more digitally resilient so you can better control your procrastination. • • Help you to gain more knowledge about what the relapse phase is, and how to prevent it.

Self-diagnosis
• Help you to rec-ognise the features of SNS that lead you to procrastinate more often.
• Help you find out your procrastination types.

Planning and preparation
• Aid you in find-ing useful tools that will help you to engage with partic-ular tasks more. • Teach you how to identify the suitable technical and socio-counter-measures to help you control your procrastination. Action • You will use your own person-al countermea-sures for a certain length of time.
• Alternative countermeasures will be made available should the suggested countermeasures not work well enough enough for you.
Self-assesment • You will assess the usefulness of the CPoSNS method and wheth-er it helps you to combat procrasti-nation.
Error identification • You will be more able to pin-point the key fea-tures of SNS that trigger procrastina-tion and the best countermeasures for you to use.

Guidance for using the D-Crastinate method
The first stage is to read and familiarise yourself with the key ideas and habits that may lead people to procrastinating more on social networking sites.
In this stage you are expected to figure out what kind of procrastinator you are by selecting the types of procrastinating that relate to you specifically. After that you can determine for yourself what you think the main features of social networking sites are that lead you to procrastinate more. However, if you feel like you procrastinate due to other things that are not currently listed you may write them down before moving on to the third stage.
This stage has two phases which include tasks engagement tools and procrastination countermeasures. Firstly, if you believe you may procrastinate due to a lack of motivation to complete tasks, please consider using tasks engagement tools. Secondly, you have been given a list of customised countermeasures that can help you to gain more control over how much you procrastinate on a day-to-day basis. They have been customised specifically for you based on the features that lead you to procrastinate.
In this stage you are required to apply the suggested task' s engagement tools and the countermeasures for one week.
After the action stage is completed, you will be expected to decide how useful you found the previous stages. Move on to the next stage if you do not find the previous stages useful in helping you gain more control over your procrastination.
In this stage you will be expected to answer the provided questions to help you analyse what went wrong in the previous stages. Once you have identified your own personal challenges you can then return to the second stage to apply the method process again.

First stage (Education)
In this stage you are expected to get more knowledge about how procrastination usually occurs on social networking sites. This includes general guidance and methods that can help users gain more control over their procrastination.
How does procrastination on social networking sites happen?
People who have a low amount of self-control might react impulsively to their social media notifications. When they see a new notification they might want to respond to it straight away and interact with others. But this might cause them to prioritise social media over tasks they have to do and responsibilities they have to carry out, which will affect how well they work and how they manage themselves in a work environment.
Many people end up spending large amounts of time procrastinating on social media. Sometimes this can be due to social pressure, usually from friends, who might be very active on social media platforms. In order to maintain a positive self-image some people might try to avoid disappointing their friends by replying to messages and notifications immediately.
People who have low skills in time-management are more likely to spend a lot of time procrastinating. They might tend to forget themselves and get easily distracted when accessing social media instead of prioritising more important tasks, which could lead to them wasting valuable time. These people need to practice managing their time more effectively so they have a healthy balance between carrying tasks / doing homework and spending time on social media (in their free time).
Do you find yourself accessing social media without even intending to do so? The impulse to frequently check social media might lead some people to developing a habit to check their notifications without meaning to, leading to them spending more time than necessary on social media. Habits like this are usually difficult to control as it has become normalised in our society to be constantly using our phones and other devices.
Some people underestimate their levels of procrastination and might think that their habits are acceptable and normal when they see that others procrastinate also. For example; 'I knew I was going to be late for the lunch event, but everyone was taking a selfie at the venue so I thought it would be okay for me to do the same. ' If you want to better control your level of procrastination there are tools and information available that can help you. You can find out how procrastination happens, what the negative results of procrastination are, and how to prevent those negative consequences. Digital resilience means the following: • You do not get overly affected emotionally by what you see online.
• You understand that a large percentage of what you see online is not necessarily a reflection of the real world.
• You understand how information on social media is filtered to cater to your interests.
People who seek to be 'perfect' might feel the need to instantly respond to every single message they receive in order to meet other people' s expectations and please them as much as possible. But the pressure many people feel to always be available online might prevent individuals from dealing with their own day-to-day tasks. Being able to accept that you can't please everyone could help you to better manage how much time you spend engaging with people online, and therefore decrease how much time you spend procrastinating on social media.
You can manage your friend' s expectations by telling them when you are free to interact with them on social media, and when you are busy. Doing this could reduce the pressure you feel to be active on social media too often. You could also apply this procrastination countermeasure with your friends so that you can both motivate each other to spend less time on your devices.
Applying goal / limit settings to your life could help you avoid receiving distracting notifications too often. This should eliminate a lot of temptation you may feel to frequently check your social media accounts, and in turn should lead to reducing how much time you spend procrastinating on social media. For example; you could select daily updates instead of hourly ones, or simply mute your notifications. This will help you to develop new, healthy habits and encourage you to engage more with your tasks rather than your devices.
To help control your level of procrastination better, you could work to improve your skills in these different areas as follows:

Solutions for procrastination
Once you decide to take control back into your own hands and spend less time procrastinating on social media, you must prepare for there to be a relapse. It can help to understand what the signs are. how it happens and what strategies you can implement into your life to help you either avoid it or tackle it. The relapse occurs when you fail to use the suggested techniques to help you control your procrastination levels, and you ultimately return to your previous habits of spending too much time on social media.
• Emotional relapse when you think about how spending time on social media could help you feel better and improve your mood. • Mental relapse when you struggle to train yourself into spending less time on social media. • Physical relapse when you return back to procrastinating like you did before.
In order to prevent or help this relapse it might help you to: • List things that will help motivate you to beat procrastination. • List the negative results of procrastination that you want to avoid.
Maintaining positive self-talk could help you to curb how much time you spend on social media. E.G; if you had sent a message to someone and found that they had read your message but hadn't yet replied, instead of obsessing over it you could choose to think more positively about the situation; they might have been busy at the time and needed more time to reply. Methods like this also help you develop more understanding and empathy towards others, and help you distance yourself from situations that might otherwise cause you anxiety.
People might also procrastinate due to peer pressure, to increase their popularity on social networking sites, and to help them stay up-to-date with what' s happening on social media. Describe your own reasons for procrastination if you feel the suggested types do not apply to you: I should have started working on my assignment an hour ago, but first I am going to check how many likes I got on my recent post.
I often procrastinate to avoid working on unpleasant or difficult tasks.
I often procrastinate to change my mood and to feel better.
I often procrastinate to distance myself from real-life issues.
When I receive a notification I check it automatically and spend time on that, despite having other tasks to perform.
If you feel the above suggested features of SNS do not lead you to procrastinate, list below some other features you can think of that do apply to you: Second stage (Self-Diagnosis) I often get distracted by notifications which lead me to accessing my social media and then delaying working on my tasks.
When I send a message to someone, I keep checking whether or not they are active online.
I respond to my contacts on social media almost instantly in order to build a positive self-image and maintain a good profile.
I find it hard to pull myself away from online conversations in order to complete my tasks.
While on social media I often see suggested content that is relevant to me, and I end up spending more time than I intended to spend on those sites.
Please identify a reward system for yourself that will help you towards achieving your goals. For example,; if you successfully managed to avoid using social media in class for one full week you could reward yourself by doing something you enjoy such as having lunch outside or going to the cinema.
Instead of trying to accomplish one huge task, break it up into multiple goals that you can easily achieve, and arrange realistic deadlines for each milestone.
Make your contacts aware that you can't be available online all the time due to commitments you have and tasks you have to accomplish. This could lessen the pressure you feel to interact constantly on social media.
Third Stage (Planning and preparation) I have almost finished all my tasks, then will be able to post the photos from the party last night.
Congratulations!! We added 10 points to your acount When you feel you are likely to procrastinate due to checking your notifications and engaging with their content, which of these software techniques would help you to control your procrastination? (You can choose more than one.) Set up auto-reply so that your contacts are automatically informed about your availability when they message you.
Set a status to show your contacts when you are not available so they do not expect you to interact immediately.
Seek advice and suggestions if are not sure how to do various technical things such as muting notifications or setting a timer. For example, in iOS you could use Siri to get more suggestion.
When you spend more time on social media than you initially intended, which of these software techniques would best help you to combat that? Set a reasonable time limit that you wish to not exceed on social media.
For example, using screen apps limit or down time in iOS. To do so, go to the setting in iOS >> screen times >> app limits or down time.
Decide on an amount of time that you wish to spend on social media. For example, if you wish to spend one hour per day on social media you could set up a timer for one hour so that you would receive a reminder when the timer is up Please, utilise your usage feedback that you have spent on social media during your working hours. For example in iOS, go to set-ting>>screen time>> usage feedback.

Third Stage (Planning and preparation)
When you send a message to someone and you find yourself constantly checking to see if they are active online, which of these software techniques would help you to combat that procrastination?
Set up auto-reply to respond automatically to your contacts in order to let them know about your availability time. For example, set up an auto-reply for your email account.
Prioritise your tasks based their importance to you. For example, list tasks that you need to carry out this week, ranking them in order of urgency, and then prioritising them over other things.
When you procrastinate by replying to your contacts as soon as they message you, mainly to build a positive self-image and maintain a good profile, which of these software techniques would help you to tackle that procrastination?
Please, utilise your usage feedback that you have spent on social media during your working hours. For example in iOS, go to setting>>screen time>> usage feedback.
Decide on a time limit that you wish to not exceed on social media. For example, using screen apps limit or down time in iOS. To do so, go to settings in iOS>> screen times>>app limits or d or down time.
Set up auto-reply to respond automatically to your contacts in order to let them know about your availability time. For example, set up an auto-reply for your email account so you don't feel the need to reply to everyone immediately Set personal goals that you wish to achieve. For example, if you wished to study for one hour per day, you could set up a timer for one hour each time you study so as to organise your time more eff fectively.

Third Stage (Planning and preparation)
When you prioritise chatting to your friends on social media instead of focusing on your tasks, which of these software techniques would help you to combat that problem?
Set up the time you wish to spend messaging your contacts on social media and let them know about the suggested time. For example, if you wish to chat for ten minutes you could set up a timer for ten minutes when the conversation starts with each of your contacts.
Please set a status to show your contacts when you are not available so they do not expect you to interact with them at certain times when you are busy.
Decide on the amount of time that you wish to spend engaging with other online. For example, if you wished to chat for ten minutes you could set up a timer for ten minutes