I've been a procrastinator my whole life, but it's gotten particularly bad since I started working remotely. When I'm teaching classes it's not an issue, but part of my job is curriculum development and question writing, which is asynchronous. I find that, when doing this kind of work, or when editing videos for my YouTube channel (or when doing anything else that I do where I am not being actively monitored by someone else) I somehow end up scrolling on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram without even realizing that it's happening.

It usually happens when there's some kind of pause, even if it's only a momentary pause. When I finish writing a question, for example, instead of going to the next question, I somehow end up on my phone. Or if I'm editing a video, after finishing one section, I'll end up on my phone instead of going to the next section. Sometimes I'll even end up pulling out my phone while waiting for a webpage to load. I hate that I do it, but most of the time I don't even realize that it's happening until 15, 20, or even 30 or more minutes have passed.

I've recently found a solution, however. If I just put my phone in a different room, I eliminate the problem completely. I don't crave it or anything. I am not even the slightest bit tempted to go get it. I kind of forget that it even exists. It's just that, for whatever reason, my body automatically grabs it and starts scrolling mindlessly whenever there is a pause in what I am doing.

Does anyone else have terrible habits like this when it comes to social media? Do you have any additional suggestions for how to deal with it?

I also suffer from this. While I don't always specifically go to my phone, I do see myself "making time" by doing other things, sometimes even personal projects totally unrelated to work.

In my case, it's because I have some time in which I have no real job to do, so I'm simply there on my desk and thus I find a way to entertain myself for the time being. When I have work to do, I'm quick to tackle it and not waste time, other than taking needed breaks to do other tasks or simply to lighten the mental stress it puts over my shoulders because it helps me stay productive for a longer while and not end the week or period burned out.

I must also say this happens because my father, who is also my boss, doesn't allow me to do much work as of yet, being a stubborn old man that refuses to delegate any work. Plus, we also have some months at work where there's barely anything to do, like this month for example, in which we normally take the chance to get ourselves a week of holidays to endure the coming months. Yet, in months like this he forces me to be productive all day and all week long, when it's absolutely impossible.

When my father is present I try to pretend being busy with something, no matter how small or irrelevant, just so he doesn't get pissed at me for absurd reasons. When he's absent, I rely more on these time-killers knowing that my coworkers are fully aware that work is what it is and we all need some time to disconnect.

Outside work, I don't have this problem because I've learnt to spend my free time on things I like doing. I sometimes get lost on Instagram and such, but never when I have other things to do. I may procrastinate a bit and start later than I should, but I end up doing whatever I had to do without applying further pauses. So basically, in my case it's just wanting to be active doing whatever I can instead of being addicted to something, only using it as a way-out when I have no other options.

While I'm at my night job, I can't have my phone out, and it's super easy to not think about it for the 6-8 hours. But since I also own my own company, it's nearly impossible because I always have to be doing social media stuff, responding to people, and posting stuff. I make like 15-20 posts a day just on my work account and if I slow down any bit of it, everything goes down hill.