A couple of days ago I read an article on the concept of "Time Confetti", about how our leisure time is slowly being fragmented into smaller pieces throughout the day:
I (and other researchers) call this phenomenon time confetti (a term coined by Brigid Schulte), which amounts to little bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking. Each bit alone seems not very bad. Collectively, though, all that confetti adds up to something more pernicious than you might expect.
I'm certainly guilty of letting myself get distracted like this. I'll often take a short break after completing a work-related task; they don't give me enough time to really relax, but they add up over the course of the day. By the end of the day I'll have spent a couple of hours "relaxing", but I'll feel no better for it.
One solution to this is using an unschedule from "The NOW Habit". The idea is to create a schedule for the day, but to add fun activities first (rather than work tasks). I've tried it in the past with some success, but over time my schedule started skewing more heavily towards work. Eventually it ended up being entirely work-focused with tiny breaks scattered in ad-hoc.
I think now might be a good time to try it again.