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The Friday 5ives: 5 webdistractions

11 05 07 - 14:00 - Bookmark this post

Every friday I present to you The Friday 5ives. Around one central theme I give five tips. tweaks, moments, pointers, anything. Really short but I hope really helpfull. The past Friday 5ives can be found on this tag-page. and lo and behold it is fixed! My dearest webmaster helped me with it so the tags are now functioning again! Hurray!

This friday, I present to you the five biggest online distractions to get anything done

One of my biggest lists is @web, where I keep URL’s, some thoughts I want to investigate further, people to email etc. It is one of my biggest lists because I practically live online. Because of that I have a lot of online contacts, networks, profiles etc. This gives me the biggest (and most fun) distractions. Here they are

1. Twitter: Pretty new but highly addictive and a big big big timewaister. On the other hand, sometimes my Twitter-posse gives me some new websites, some inside info on what’s happening. But most of the time, I F5 the mainscreen to see what everybody else is doing. You don’t know what Twitter is? Don’t go here then…
2. RSS: Heralded in the online world as the lifesaver of the information overload but ended up giving you more information per day than any mediaeval knight would get in his entire life. RSS has it’s features and it’s benefits. But most feedreaders keep giving you this big bold number of unread items. For some reason you always end up “mark read”-ing your folders or tabs. Well at least I do..
3. Email: When treated in the right manner email is a great and powerful tool. But you have to tweak the settings of your mailprogram. Here you find some tips on how to make email work better for you. For instance by shutting off all notices and sounds when a new mail arrives. On the other hand, i too find myself in the thoughtprocess going “well, I really really REALLY need to clean my Inbox before I can go on with task X on project Y. No really!” Yeah right…procrastination-a-gogo!
4. Searchengines: When I research I use Google, Technorati and Wikipedia. Biggest problem: The other links. Especially on Wikipedia. It is too tempting to click on a word or topic you don’t really know things about but would like to. And of you go into Wikispace….Same thing on Google and Technorati
5. IM: Also very distracting while at work is other people bothering you with trivialities via IM. Best solution: Make sure you turn off your IM client during workhours. Easy as that…

Like this article? Subscribe to the RSS feed! Used tags: email, friday_5ives, hack, howto, im, rss, search, twitter

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Nice tips! I’ve managed to eliminate most of the distracting factors when I need to get work done at my computer by taking the following measures:

• I quit my mail client altogether


• Same goes for my RSS reader…


• ... and the IM (actually this is very nice, hardly use IM these days, don’t miss it at all)

What helps for me when using search engines for researching something is to stay focused. When I encounter something interesting (which happens a LOT) I just jot it down in my Paperblank, which has a section that functions as a collection bucket. This is a huge step forward as I used to open new tabs as if my life depended on it.

I haven’t managed to eliminate the attention thief that is Twitter yet. I keep Twitterific running all the time, but in my secondary monitor so it doesn’t obscure my view of the important stuff on my laptop’s screen.

Oh and I think 43Folders deserves to be mentioned here, there are some great articles over there on eliminating distractions! http://43folders.com
Andreas Lindeboom - 11 05 07 - 18:14

Hi Frank(big grin)
Thanks for your comment, Breda is a charming city!

When I read your latest post, it was like you put a mirror in front of me… I am such a big procrastinator, that I have to rip off my network cable whenever I need to focus on something, otherwise…

Btw, have you seen this clip? http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm..

Looking forward to meeting you in Amsterdam!
Gabriela - 14 05 07 - 16:04

Great tips. Especially on turning off IM.

Clicked on the Twitter link. I don’t get it. Why would anyone spend five seconds there?
Mike - 17 05 07 - 21:03

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Frank Meeuwsen