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Conservation of Procrastination: Do Productivity Interventions Save Time Or Just Redistribute It?

Published: 02 May 2019 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    Productivity behavior change systems help us reduce our time on unproductive activities. However, is that time actually saved, or is it just redirected to other unproductive activities? We report an experiment using HabitLab, a behavior change browser extension and phone application, that manipulated the frequency of interventions on a focal goal and measured the effects on time spent on other applications and platforms. We find that, when intervention frequency increases on the focal goal, time spent on other applications is held constant or even reduced. Likewise, we find that time is not redistributed across platforms from browser to mobile phone or vice versa. These results suggest that any conservation of procrastination effect is minimal, and that behavior change designers may target individual productivity goals without causing substantial negative second-order effects.

    Supplementary Material

    ZIP File (paper330.zip)
    This is an appendix describing the mobile and browser interventions included in the version of HabitLab that this study was run on.
    MP4 File (pn3785.mp4)
    Supplemental video

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    1. Conservation of Procrastination: Do Productivity Interventions Save Time Or Just Redistribute It?

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      May 2019
      9077 pages
      ISBN:9781450359702
      DOI:10.1145/3290605
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      Published: 02 May 2019

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      1. behavior change
      2. distractions and interruptions

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      • (2024)Real-World Winds: Micro Challenges to Promote Balance Post Smartphone OverloadProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642583(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
      • (2024)StayFocused: Examining the Effects of Reflective Prompts and Chatbot Support on Compulsive Smartphone UseProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642479(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
      • (2024)A Longitudinal In-the-Wild Investigation of Design Frictions to Prevent Smartphone OveruseProceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642370(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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