How we might look if we hadn't discovered Ocado

Cat in a hat

It should come as no surprise that cute animals are often our procrastination method of choice: looking at them causes the release of pleasure hormone dopamine and one Japanese study claims that breaking from work to look at “kawaii” (cute) pictures increases productivity and performance. Laughter also reduces stress hormones such as cortisol.

The problem, of course, is that when it’s at our fingertips, the temptation is much harder to remove, so even though a 10-minute break may aid productivity, a scattergun approach, which means breaking your workflow to read an email subject-lined ‘Friday Lolz’, may be hard to resist, hampering your efficiency.

“For years we have heard the value of ‘multitasking’ when actually it’s a myth,” says Meager. “Switching between tasks means nothing gets your full attention.” Some people take extreme measures: apps such as MeeTimer record how much time you spend on which sites – sending you analysing, guilt-inducing data – and authors Zadie Smith and Dave Eggers are among those who have downloaded the Freedom app; you tell it how long you need to focus for and it takes you offline for the duration. You can go back online if you reboot, but the thinking is that it takes too much effort to bother.

There are smaller scale things you can do too to avoid the lure of YouTube lolz. “Reward yourself with tea after you’ve done your expenses rather than putting it off while you make one, starting a spiral of procrastination,” says Heppell. “Schedule properly and turn off the email notification that distracts you every time someone sends a viral. You wouldn’t let somebody stand talking to you while you’re on the phone so why allow them to on email?”

The other problem with computer-based breaks is that we don’t get the benefits of movement – leaving our desk every 30 minutes to stretch and walk around stimulates blood flow round the body, increasing our energy and attentiveness. Which is something that we don’t get from that biggest time-thief of all: social media.

“People estimate their use as being much lower than it is, because it’s designed to feel like five minutes,” says Heppell. “You wouldn’t go on otherwise.” In fact, the average time spent on Facebook per visit is 18 minutes and in general we spend 1 hour, 41 minutes a month on YouTube. Given that the UK has the highest online population in the world (85%) this is the case for a lot of us.

Anna Fielding, editor of Stylist.co.uk and Emerald Street, says that our website, like many others, benefits from a view of its content as ‘bitesize.’ “So many of us spend so much time in front of screens, if something looks like it will entertain you for a short amount of time – say five minutes – then you’ll click because you feel you aren’t wasting too much of your day.”

And that, of course, is what gets us. The idea of breaking for 30 minutes to watch Girls at your desk seems preposterous but a five-minute break that ends up taking as long? Ah...

“We have to start being honest with ourselves,” says Heppell. “Admit that you missed your friend’s birthday drinks because you chose to spend half of the morning scrolling Facebook, rather than citing being ‘so busy’,” he says.

“Being clear about that will make you think more about how you use your time.” The important thing, says Meager, is to simply ask yourself, “Is this what I want to be doing?” “It’s when you’ve ended up in a half-trance on a website that you don’t even want to be on that you need to stop yourself,” she says.

Clinical psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd agrees. “Take the break but take it differently,” she says. “Do 45 minutes of focused work then reward yourself. Western society is so goal-driven and competitive that you’re expected to be productive all of the time. But that is simply not realistic.” Which means that next time we email a friend to cancel dinner, we can be honest and tell her that we simply spent a lot of today watching pandas sneeze.

Why we're spending work time on YouTube