Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.
Great tool to stop wasting time with web sites
Having a web browser on your computer is like having a television on your desk. Dangerous stuff for a procrastinator.
The free Firefox web browser (available at www.getfirefox.com) has an great add-on available called LeechBlock (available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476). This add-on lets you block chosen web sites completely during your working hours, or set a maximum amount of time per day that you can spend visiting those sites. All you have to do to add a site to the list of blocked sites is right-click on the web page and select the LeechBlock menu, or select LeechBlock from the web browser's Tools menu. Even better, you can tell LeechBlock to not let you remove the blocks during your working hours.
Internet Explorer does not have this, so what I've done is switched to Firefox for all my browsing, and I've removed Internet Explorer from my desktop. I've heard there are some web sites which don't work in Firefox but in the last year I've never come across one. I've read that about 25% of web users are using Firefox.
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Re: Great tool to stop wasting time with web sites
I'm about to make this sound more complicated than it is! I hope this won't discourage anybody. You can find better explanations if you go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476
When I wrote "All you have to do to add a site is...", I left out some information. If you want to add a site using the Tools menu, after you select LeechBlock from the web browser's Tools menu you then have to enter the site name in the big box and then choose the hours and days you want to block the site for. And if you want to add a site by right-clicking on the web page, after you select the LeechBlock menu you then have to click on "Add this site to block set 1" (or "Add this site to block set 2" or some other block set). A "block set" is a set of blocked sites. Before you can use right-clicking on the web page to block a site, you have to set the hours and days to block the block set by selecting LeechBlock from the Tools menu. The reason LeechBlock lets you use more than one block set is so that you can block different sites in different ways (for example, blocking one site 24 hours a day but another only during working hours).
By the way, the way to "tell LeechBlock to not let you remove the blocks during your working hours" is to select LeechBlock from the web browser's Tools menu, and then click on "Prevent access to options for this block set at times when these sites are blocked".
If anyone has trouble with LeechBlock, please post here and I'll try to help.
thank you! this has to be
thank you! this has to be the best thing ever.
firefox<3
web site blocker for IE
Simple-ology has a free tool that does similar stuff for internet explorer.
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Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin
IE?
Is there anything like this for Internet Explorer? I have to use IE at work and that's where I do most of my time-wasting. I have to use IE for work tasks so I can't just stay away from it. Any suggestions? Of course, I wouldn't block THIS site lol J.
cool.
I've been looking for something like this for Firefox... now, the only issue is, can I download it or do I need to get the IT people to do it for me. B/c that gets tricky...
check.
Installed and activated. We'll see how this goes! Wonder how long it will take until I sabotage it?
It's actually rather
It's actually rather sabotage-resistant.
As I mentioned, to make it hard to remove the website blocks, you can choose the LeechBlock menu from the web browser's Tools menu, and then (I forget this step) select "Options...", and then click on "Prevent access to options for this block set at times when these sites are blocked". If you then choose the General options tab on the top right, you can turn on additional features (using checkboxes) that will make it even harder to sabotage.
the danger of surfing
Ey - I don't even have the self-discipline to install such a thing. :)
And anyway, it wouldn't work in my case. The main way I fritter away time on the computer is by researching interesting things - technology, ecology, books, news. There's no way to shut off the sites where I waste time without also shutting off the sites I need for work.
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Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.
Maybe you could decide to
Maybe you could decide to use the web only during certain hours of your working day, and block it during other hours of the working day? I'm reminded of people I've come across who find it useful to reserve certain hours of their workday for working on their own without going to meetings or answering email.