Internet Distractions

For all the necessary, useful activities we use the internet for (researching essays, communicating with faraway friends...), we also have access to unlimited distractions. Some are consistent. You have to check Facebook every ten minutes to see if someone wrote on your wall. You want a twenty minute break from work, so you play a few levels of Bejeweled.

The fact that these distractions are so easy to access makes it difficult to keep a steady work pace. (Your favorite forum is only a few clicks away in a separate tab, after all.) Outside of self control, though, we have a few options. There are programs out there that you can use to self-block yourself from specific web sites. Lifehacker recently featured an article on LeechBlock, a small application that lets you set which sites you want to block, on which days, and at what times.

That works great if you put off work by visiting a handful of sites. You can keep yourself away from LiveJournal, GoogleNews, and Yahoo!Games--whatever you use to procrastinate. For me though, specific sites aren't an issue. I get bored of social-networking sites (like Facebook and LiveJournal) fairly easily, so even if I check them before I dig into an assignment, I won't spend much time on those sites. Same thing with online gaming sites--they can hold my attention only for so long.

And then I look for something else. I find a new blog or a random article. I even take a break from web-surfing to reorganize files on my computer (or my bookmarks, which I sorted through for forty minutes the other night).

Blocking yourself may be of some help, but really, it's up to the person to focus on work instead of procrastinating. I'm not much of a help to myself when it comes to buckling down and getting to work, though. I just downloaded StumbleUpon, and I love it! It's a toolbar application that not only brings up random web sites, but finds ones tailored to your interests. Then you give sites a thumbs up or thumbs down to tell StumbleUpon more about what you want to see. The more you stumble, the better the sites match your interests...Because I needed another way to avoid writing essays and such.

Technorati tags: internet, Lifehacker, distractions, StumbleUpon