Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Hulu, Digg. What do all these websites have in common? Well, if your a college student, all these sites are addicting, and for some reason, the addiction is stronger around test time. If your like me, all five of these websites are on your bookmark toolbar which makes these distractions just a click away. However, there is a solution.
Check out LeechBlock. LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool, an extension for the Firefox web browser, designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them.
You can specify up to six sets of sites to block, with different times and days for each set. You can block sites within fixed time periods (e.g., between 9am and 5pm), after a time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour), or with a combination of time periods and time limit (e.g., 10 minutes in every hour between 9am and 5pm). You can also set a password for access to the extension options, just to slow you down in moments of weakness!
The sites to block can be specified using wildcards (e.g., *.somesite.com) and exceptions (e.g., +allowme.somesite.com).
LeechBlock also keeps track of the total amount of time you have spent browsing the sites in each block set.
Download it here: LeechBlock – Add-on for Firefox
Do you use website blocking software when you need to get work done? Let us know in the comments.
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[...] the next 7 days, I will be using a program called LeechBlock to prevent me from accessing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube on my computer. I will use Twitter at [...]