As most of us know working on a computer with internet access is very very hazardous it is amazing as to how many websites one can visit at a go and how time flies while on the net;  the intriguing connection from one site to the other ooh aaah!The question is these sites completely useless? No not entirely so they can be great site activities how ever if they become addictive then Houston we have a problem!!

6 WAYS TO BEAT THEM

1.      Track time. You might not know exactly how bad your addiction is, because the time you spend on some of these sites just flies by. Try tracking your time, at least for a little while, to see where your problem areas are. Page Addict is one of a number of good utilities for this, and once you see your worst time-wasters, you can also use it for the next strategy.

2.   Block them. Once you’ve identified your worst time wasters, it’s possible to block them with one of several utilities. Stealth Kiwi and Leech Block are two of my favorites.

3.      Unplug. Another strategy that actually works really well is to unplug from the Internet when you really need to get work done. When you finish your task, connect and have fun, then unplug again for some more serious work.

4.      Go on a diet. This is a more drastic strategy, but sometimes it’s necessary if your addiction has gotten really bad. Disconnect yourself from the Internet for at least a day, if not 2-3 days or even a week. The worse your addiction, the longer your diet should be. After the period of complete disconnection, follow Strategy 6 below by going on an extremely limited information diet.

5.      Just let go. This strategy is for those of us who feel that if we don’t answer all of our emails, or read all of our feeds, or check our blog stats, or see what’s happening on our favorite social sites, then somehow the world will fall apart. Of course, we never put it that way in our head, but the urge is still there. But what happens if you just let go, and allow your email to pile up for a day, or don’t check your stats or your favorite forum? The world will go on. This might seem obvious, but again, I think many of us have a subconscious idea that something bad will happen if we don’t stay up to date. Try letting go for a day, and see what happens.

6.      Limit time. This is actually the most sensible strategy, but of course it’s not easy if you have an addiction. Therefore, I recommend you use it in conjunction with one of the above strategies. For this strategy, you decide how many minutes and how many times you are going to allow yourself to go on your worst time-wasting sites. If email is your addiction, for example, you might decide to check email only twice a day for 30 minutes a session. Decide on what time limit would work best for you, put it on a schedule (10 a.m. and 4 p.m., for example), and stick to it. If you have trouble sticking to it, try one of the other strategies.

NOW ONTO THE TIME WASTERS….

1.      FORUMS OR NEWSGROUPS.  (IE C69 LOL) A favorite social hangout for many people, there are thousands of forums out there, and many of them are quite useful. It can be a great thing to discover others who are going through the same things you are  or  interested in the same things you are. So I’m not knocking forums at all. But you should still set a time limit on how long you spend on forums, and maybe only do it once or twice a day.

2.      ONLINE SHOPPING. Amazon, Ebay, and the hundreds of other popular shopping sites online. The worst thing about these sites is that you don’t only spend a lot of time on them (there’s so much stuff out there!) but you also end up spending a lot of money. This was one reason I cut up my credit card.

3.      HUMOR SITES. When I find a great humor site, I can spend a long, long time reading through the archives. If you haven’t gone to any of these sites, don’t do it unless you have a day to waste

4.      EMAIL. Whether it’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Outlook, or some other favorite email client, email is the king of time-wasters. It’s a very productive tool, of course, and a necessity for most of us these days. However, it is also an addiction, and we often put off our work by going to check our email. It’s important that you turn off email notifications if you have work to do (and you know you do!), and limit your time spent checking and processing and responding to email.

5.      GOOGLE READER. Any RSS feed reader, including Bloglines or Thunderbird, is included in this item. If you have 100+ feeds to read every day, you’ll spend a lot of time with your feed reader. And any time you feel like procrastinating, you can open up the feed reader and see what new posts have been published. Limit your feed reading to once a day, and cut your feeds down to a minimum.

6.      AIM. Or any chat client (IRC, Googletalk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, Skype, what have you). If you’ve always got your chat client open, even if you put your status as “away” or “busy” or something like that, you will be constantly interrupted by new messages, new people coming online, new people trying to get your attention. Make your time yours by closing your chat client, and only opening it when you really need to chat.

7.      ONLINE SOLITAIRE. Or any similar online games, including chess, sudoku, Bejeweled, whatever. I know, it’s addicting. Block these games.

8.      WORLD OF WARCRAFT. Or any of the other popular MMORPGs. People can spend days, nights, weeks on these things, as they are amazingly addicting. In fact, they should be regulated like drugs.

9.      BLOGS. Many people read blog posts through feed readers (see Item #2), but many bookmark their favorite blogs and read them directly on the site, and find new blogs through the blogrolls of their favorite blogs, and spend a lot of time reading through archives and comments and also commenting on all these blogs. It can take up your whole day.

10.  NEWS SITES. News addicts out there, you know who you are. Some people are plugged into the news all day long. Personally, I’m not saying you should go to this extreme, of disconnecting yourself completely from news site but you should still consider limiting your news consumption to a minimum.

11.  YOUTUBE. You can spend hours upon hours watching cool stuff on YouTube, as every video has a dozen other related ones to get you to stay on the site. And that really works. I’ve spent days on YouTube, to be truthful, before deciding never to do it again. Now, I watch a video and then immediately close the tab.

12.  FACEBOOK/MYSPACE. I’m not an addict of either of these sites, but I can see the appeal.  I know many adults who are  on there too. There’s no shame in that, but you should realize that it’s an addiction, combining the appeal of blogs, email and forums

I hope this helps in curbing your addictions

Coco Devyne 

xoxoxo