Leechblock

My discovery of the week is Leechblock.
Last week, I was getting on the procrastination and pointless browsing path again (because I’m worried about a though deadline I just heard about), and I decided I needed a strong hand to get this under control again.

I’ve used blocksite in the past, to control my random facebooking. After having facebook and other distracting websites blocked from my office computer, I started boycotting myself. I started turning off the add-on, surf around for some time, and then turn it on again. Silly, isn’t it?

Now I’m experimenting with Leechblock. This software has two options:
– allow certain websites for a previously defined amount of time during a day, and then block them
– set a timeframe during which you want to block certain websites.
The great thing is that you cannot change any settings while a block is active. You simply have to sit through it.

I’ve used the second option yesterday during 1h40mins to make some good progress on a writing task, and I’ve made the first option a standard feature allowing me 20 minutes of browsing to my most distracting websites a day.

After just a few days of using this software, I would say it is a great productivity tool.