If you spend time online blogging, you may fall into the pitfalls of "time sucks". When you should be working, you find yourself looking at Facebook, checking Twitter, photo sharing sites, etc. Before you know it, you've wasted what can turn into hours. Chrome has a great extension, The Nanny for Chrome, to help you avoid the wasted hours. It allows you to set time limits for social sites. If you go over your quota, you get a subtle reminder of what you're really supposed to be doing online.
If you spend time online blogging, you may fall into the pitfalls of "time sucks". When you should be working, you find yourself looking at Facebook, checking Twitter, photo sharing sites, etc. Before you know it, you've wasted what can turn into hours. Chrome has a great extension, The Nanny for Chrome, to help you avoid the wasted hours. It allows you to set time limits for social sites. If you go over your quota, you get a subtle reminder of what you're really supposed to be doing online.
These days I pretty much don’t use any browser plugins or extensions, but here’s one that I think everyone should have. It’s called “Nanny for Google Chrome”. I installed it yesterday, and I have a feeling it will give me a great productivity boost.
Here’s the problem I was trying to solve: despite knowing it’s a waste of time, I spend far too much time every day on Facebook, Gmail, Reddit and news sites. Combining all of them I think it would add up to 2 or 3 hours per day. Sure Gmail is mostly work related, and the others have a professional aspect too (e.g., I read news sites to keep up with the latest tech developments), but still it’s not where I add value to my business, so ideally those activities should be kept to a minimum.
The solution: The Nanny for Chrome extension basically allows you to input a list of URLs you want to control, specifying the amount of time per day you are allowed to use each one. Here’s how my list looks like right now:
Gmail – 30 minutes per day
Facebook – 10 minutes per day
Reddit – 10 minutes per day
NYTimes, WSJ, Economist, etc – 10 minutes per day combined
After I use my quota the extension will basically block the sites, and I’ll do my best to respect that. If the quota is consumed while you are on the site the extension will show a blank screen with this headline: “Shouldn’t you be working?”. Pretty effective huh?
Read entire article One Browser Extension You Must Have
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