Stay Focused - How to Keep that Web Addiction at Bay

There are millions of sites out there designed to keep us entertained, informed or take our money.  All of which, competing for your attention, alongside your work if you are one of the millions of us who work at a computer.  While I work, that facebook bookmark calls my attention, or that video sent to me by a colleague begs for my time. These time wasters can quickly add up into hundreds of lost hours.

Let's take a look at how this impacts you.

30 minutes a day
2.5 hours a week
120 hours/ year (assuming 4 week PTO)
3 Weeks completely wasted

1 hour per day
5 hours per week
240 hours/year
6 weeks completely wasted

I have found a way for you to cut out that addiction and better manage your time, it is called Stay Focusd.

This Chrome extension is how you can combat wasted hours and benefit from a newfound productivity.  After installing it to Chrome, the program starts off by suggesting a total time of just 10 minutes to browse your favorite non work related websites.  From there, add your normal work hours into the program.  They have a list of suggestions pre-loaded and you can add your favorite craving to the list.

You can change the amount of time you give yourself, but I recommend going cold turkey with 10 minutes of time available.  Don't worry, if you really need to cheat you can.  Simply open up another browser and go crazy.  This just blocks you on the Chrome browser.  If you DO cheat, when you go to open that other browser, you'll think twice about allowing yourself to waste your time because you have committed to staying focused! This extra effort will hopefully prevent you from being bad and you'll thank me by sending money from all of the extra cash you are now able to make.

Here is my list (most of these came as suggestions from Stay Focusd):

• bbc.co.uk
• break.com
• collegehumor.com
• facebook.com
• hotmail.com
• huffingtonpost.com
• hulu.com
• netflix.com
• nytimes.com
• pinterest.com
• thedailyshow.com
• twitter.com
• vimeo.com
• yahoo.com
• youtube.com
• lifehacker.com
• schemer.com

This list is still developing as time goes by as I remember sites that should be added to the list or something keeps me from work. 


End your enslavement to media today!  StayFocsd is free in the Chrome extension store.


How do you stay focused?  What sites am I missing that I should block? Know any other great productivity tools?

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