You already know from the title what I’m talking about. You’re looking up nutrition information on a food product and before you know it you’re diving into the details of the 10 power tools that connect with your type of lithium battery that your string trimmer uses. Or, you somehow find yourself scrolling through Pinterest (or Instagram or search result images).

There’s one easy way to know in the moment if you are losing productivity to The Rabbit Hole of Interesting Things: scrolling. It’s difficult to get off topic without scrolling. The ‘load more’ button counts as scrolling (if you were going to make a technical argument).

You know I’m right. Not all scrolling is non-productive but let’s be honest – most of it is a giant waste of time. If we go back to the time management matrix, most scrolling probably fits into Quadrants III or IV –  not important or not urgent, or both not important and not urgent. It’s fun to scroll because it gives our brain a way to look for something new. But it’s rarely productive.

Apps are set up to keep you on their platform (except perhaps for Pinterest). Infinite scrolling is a must-have feature to keep you interested. Imagine if you got to the end of a feed on any social platform? You probably can’t imagine because it doesn’t happen. And that’s by design.

Just knowing that scrolling is an indication of lower (or no) productivity is a third of the battle. The second third is recognizing it when it happens. This means you need to catch yourself scrolling and ask yourself whether it’s what you want to be doing. You have to create a habit to ask yourself the question. There’s not an easy way to catch the behavior other than to raise your awareness of what you are doing in general.

The third part of the battle, once you’ve caught yourself scrolling and deemed it non-productive, is to act. Close the app. Put the device down, or out of arm’s reach. This is also tough because it’s fun to scroll. You wouldn’t be scrolling if it were difficult or awful.

In summary, if you’re looking for a few more minutes (or hours unfortunately) of productive time during the day, become aware of your actions and if you catch yourself scrolling, determine if that’s productive time. If not, do something that is 🙂

engineer your life

  1. Reflect on your level of productivity when you are scrolling. Decide if you agree with the premise that scrolling can be an indicator of non-productive effort.
  2. Put yourself on alert for scrolling. When you catch yourself, ask if this action is productive.
  3. Stash the app and/or device if you feel you’ve scrolled into The Rabbit Hole of Interesting Things when you have other more important work to do.
  4. A little scrolling is fine as long as it’s on your terms. Do not allow the app designers sneaky methods to toy with your mind and encourage you to scroll when it’s not the right time to do so.