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A while back, the BBC News reported that:
Often it's so innocent. It might even be relevant initially. A quick Wikipedia fact-check, perhaps. But before long you've been sucked into the wormhole. Link after link, page after page. When you finally snap out of it you've lost a precious hour and you're reading about the intricacies of 16th Century Prussian politics. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone.
"We're really entering the golden age of procrastination," says Dr Piers Steel, who has conducted surveys and written The Procrastination Equation. "One in four [people] would describe themselves as a chronic procrastinator, [while] over half the population would describe themselves as frequent," he says. "In the last 40 years there's been about a 300-400% growth in chronic procrastination," which is when it becomes particularly self-defeating, Steel explains. UK smartphone users check their phone 221 times a day on average, a recent survey found. Checking emails and social media cost 36% of respondents more than an hour each day in productivity, another survey found.
The article gives some extreme measures to stop procrastination including Victor Hugo's valet hiding clothes or Greek orator Demosthenes shaving one side of his face to discourage any outdoors procrastination. Software to discourage procrastination is also mentioned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Magic Oddball on Thursday October 16 2014, @09:40AM
The anti-procrastination software I'm aware of essentially consists of a brief timer that locks down access to whatever domains or programs you're having trouble resisting. The idea is that you're supposed to initially set it for just 5 minutes, which is long enough to give you a chance to get going in your work, but short enough that it doesn't seem too overwhelming. Ideally, you'll get into your work so much that you won't even notice when the time is up; if you find yourself tempted to procrastinate at some point after the timer runs out, you can quickly (so you don't lose too much momentum) reset it to run for as long you feel like you can work.