Here’s the thing. I never waste time on websites when I should be working. No really. I never dawdle over Hacker News, Reddit, slouch around BBC News or click and giggle at Cracked.com. Why would I do that stuff, when work’s so very very important? I’m sure you folks never do it either, and that it’s nose down from the moment you arrive at your desk till the moment they open the cage doors at the end of the day.
But for those of us you who lack the self control to stop frittering away their lives in front of the screen, there’s a couple of solutions which may help. The new TabMinder for the Chrome web browser is a simple tool which lets you set up time limits for various web addresses, after which you will be gently prompted to close the tab and get on with something important.
We’ve mentioned LeechBlock for Firefox before, but it’s worth repeating it here. This plugin does the same kind of job but with more brute force and less finesse. You set up specific times during which you cannot access certain URLs, and that’s it. You have to wait until the access time allows you to visit, which means you might as well get on with some work while you’re waiting. Right? Right?
I've been using LeechBlock for a couple of weeks now and it has really helped to keep me off websites that are no use for work.