Measure Me #2: Web Surfing
Introduction
For the Measure Me #2 assignment, I decided to focus on the behavior of unproductive, unplanned web surfing.
“Web surfing” is a catchall term I’m using to describe the use of technology as a distraction, with a focus on undirected perusales of internet sites (eg Google News, Wikipedia, Youtube, Reddit, etc). I also focused on behavior that fit two specific categories:
- Unproductive: the web surfing was not for a particular purpose (eg, an assignment)
- Unplanned: the web surfing was not something I had planned in advance. For example, sometimes I’ll purposefully give myself a break of 15 minutes to surf the web between assignments — I wouldn’t count that time, unless I ended up going over 15 minutes
I wasn’t interested in the use of things such as phone games, but rather internet usage, as in Measure Me #1 I noticed that I spent a lot of time on web surfing, but little time playing phones on my game. I also wanted to focus on web surfing because I’ve noticed it is a behavior that often “balloons” in my life — that is, I’ll start doing some reading on the web for 5 minutes, and next thing I know, an hour has gone by. Also, I often am not even particularly engaged as I’m surfing — I feel unfulfilled by the content I’m consuming, but I just keep surfing. I hoped by tracking my habits I would be able to get a better insight into why this behavior occurs, and therefore, how I can reduce this behavior in the future.
I tracked my habits over two days — a Sunday and a Monday. I thought that this was particularly useful because it allowed me to see my habits on both a weekday (with classes) and a weekend (without classes). I realized that doing a specific time interval wouldn’t be useful, since my behavior was occurring at a variety of times, and could easily occur in increments too small to capture with a time interval. Additionally, during Measure Me #1, I noticed that the time increments themselves started to affect my behavior: most importantly, it would be a clear reminder to me of my time wasting by alerting me every 15 minutes of time passing. Therefore, I decided to just record each time I caught myself web surfing, with a note about what I had been trying to do in that period.
Tracking:
Analysis:
After recording and making my system graphs, I noticed a few key patterns emerge as to triggers of web surfing. The first was that web surfing frequently occurred as a form of procrastination for things I didn’t particularly want to do — for example, I wasn’t web surfing when I was delaying going to a meal, but rather when I was delaying starting an assignment or writing emails. In particular, it seemed like this procrastination was related to starting open-ended assignments, or resuming a project when I wasn’t sure what the next step was. It also often occurred when I got interrupted while doing something — for example, I would receive a text, email or groupMe notification. This interruption then triggered me to leave my current task and start mindlessly surfing. A final trigger was ease of access, which became especially apparent in the Fishbone diagram, which helped me to identify environmental variables. A lot of factors in my environment make it easy to start web surfing, for example, due to Covid fears I’m normally studying in my dorm room, where my desk and bed are close together. I also do all my work online, which means a deep spiral into web surfing is only a new chrome tab away.
Making system graphs was useful not only for identifying triggers of web surfing, but perhaps more importantly, for identifying why I kept web surfing for long periods of time. In my Connection Circle, I identified several key cycles which keep me surfing: most notably, algorithms and embedded links which continue a cycle of new websites and information to keep me interested. Likewise, once I was distracted from my task my flow was impaired, which led me to keep going back to my phone / computer for web surfing. The fishbone graph helped me identify environmental triggers to continued web surfing: by having no timers or clear deadlines, I didn’t have sufficient motivators to stop web surfing or to notice the passage of time.
Future Behavior
Using the learnings from tracking and charting my behavior, I’ve identified several things I’d like to do to reduce web surfing in the future. The first is to turn off notifications when I am working on something in order to prevent interruptions which trigger the start of web surfing. Likewise, to remove the environmental ease of web surfing, I am planning on printing out more of my readings so I can do them non-electronically, which will reduce the ease of just opening up a new tab and beginning to surf. To reduce the length of web surfing sessions, I plan to use timers in short increments to remind me how much time I am wasting and keep me more conscious of my actions.
