Zone Out Surfing? WAKE UP!
Google is my first point of reference for information these days. But too many times, I look something up, check a spelling and then think - hey, while I’m here, I’ll just check bloglines and see if anyone I read has posted anything new… then four hours later I wake up to find myself metamoderating on slashdot wondering where the hell my afternoon just went.
Webolodeon is a greasemonkey script for firefox intended to catch this kind of behaviour: after five minutes online, you’re presented with a pop up asking you to justify your surfing.
If your work is done, just cancel the dialog box and quit the app; if you’re not finished (and you really need to keep zipping around the Interweb a bit longer), insert a virtual nickel by typing a summary of what you’re working on. This buys you another five minutes.
When working on something particularly tedious a couple of years ago, I had an Outlook reminder pop up every five minutes urging me to “Focus!”. It was quite unpleasant but it helped me get the job done. I wonder how this will compare.