OT: Helping Ease the Addiction
If you're like me, you may have found that your obsession with mgoblog (and correspondingly, twitter, facebook, etc.) has gotten to the point where your work or study performance is getting affected to a degree with which you are less than comfortable, you may find this to be a handy tool. (For Windows users only)
http://seo-chief.com/temporarily-block-time-wasting-websites-to-improve-your-productivity/
It's a small little script that blocks web sites temporarily. Any time you double-click it, all of the sites at the top of the file become blocked, and any time you double-click it again, those sites become available again. I plan on using it to keep me on task during work hours (after I finish this anyway) and during lunch I'll come and see if anything's been posted while I was being busy. That's the plan, anyway...
I don't claim to be an expert on scripting, but from what I can tell it appears to be pretty safe and successful when run, and other tech sites seem to advocate for it as well.
In order to add blocked websites you have to open the file in something like notepad and add the list of websites at the top of the file, save it and close it again. Make sure that you don't set the text editor as the default means of opening the file.
As always, if other users find issues with the file please let me know and I'll rescind my recommendation, but for now I'm hoping this will help (and I have a feeling I'm not alone here). See you at noonish EST!
February 23rd, 2011 at 9:20 AM ^
totally thought this was going to be a ryan mallett repost.
February 23rd, 2011 at 9:36 AM ^
Are you implying I should be working during work hours? I don't think I like your tone.
February 23rd, 2011 at 9:40 AM ^
Ok, if the addict is the one controlling the script than they can just unblock everytime they want to go back. If it had a timer of some kind maybe it would be useful. You should have it blocked for about 3 hours at a time or something.
Also I think Brian would not appreciate this!
February 23rd, 2011 at 9:53 AM ^
i have tried this, my addiction was too strong. it was pretty cool though to see my time spent on mgoblog spike during various times of the two months that i used this. i began to get nervous that my employer would find the software and check the record though.
February 23rd, 2011 at 10:22 AM ^
February 23rd, 2011 at 11:12 AM ^
isn't this like a heroin addict locking his H in a box that he has the key for?
February 23rd, 2011 at 11:20 AM ^
Personally, I use the "StayFocusd" (yes that's how it's spelled) extension for Chrome on my work computer. As someone pointed out above, blocking websites does you no good if you're in control of said blocking. StayFocusd only let's you adjust the settings if you haven't used up your alloted browsing time for the time. So no deciding, "oh just another 2 minutes..." I'm just done for the day (until I get home, that is).
February 23rd, 2011 at 12:08 PM ^
I believe the 1st step to addiction is acknowledging the problem....
I have acknowledged it but I forgot what the other steps are because there are these threads I need to read:
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12 replies
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30 replies
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6 replies
February 23rd, 2011 at 12:31 PM ^
Rollover caption:
"After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load. The urge to check all those sites magically vanished."
February 23rd, 2011 at 12:38 PM ^
Because when I do there are plenty of new blog posts and forum posts, instead of seeing them come up one at a time.
February 23rd, 2011 at 12:44 PM ^
Well so far so good... as long as you store the 'key' file in a place that takes a number of clicks to get to, it seems to work pretty well actually. The number of times that I tried to load internet explorer out of habit only to be greeted by a blank page was kind of disturbing though...