We understand: You sit looking at your computer all day long, typing reports, answering email messages, and creating presentations. It’s difficult to resist the temptation to run over to TMZ.com to catch up on the most recent celebrity gossip. But all of the side trips to the Internet’s guilty pleasures can add up to a lot of lost time during the day. They can cut into your efficiency, something your boss won’t appreciate. Fortunately, if you use the Chrome web browser, you can add several extensions designed to keep the Internet’s distractions from cutting into your workday. The Huffington Post recently took a look at the best distraction-blasting Chrome extensions. We focus on 4 below. Use these and you just might be amazed at how productive you will be.
Stay Focused
This add-on places a time limit on those time-wasting websites that you like. Once the timer on each site runs out, it will stay blocked for the remainder of the day, preventing you from clicking on CNN or The Onion for an anti-productivity visit.
Cool Clock
If you regularly find that you miss appointments or forget to attend meetings, Cool clock could become your new best friend. It has a clock, calendar, alarm, and timer included in it. It also lets you set desktop time notifications. Another great use for this is to use it to set reminders for tasks you have to complete.
Last Pass
How much time do you waste endeavoring to remember your password to Gmail or to your online banking website? Last Pass, another nifty Chrome add-on, may change all this. This extension permits you to easily manage and monitor the various online passwords you have to contend with. You’ll be amazed at how much more time you’ll have once you remove those pesky attempts to remember which passwords have numbers and which ones have capital letters.
Turn off the Lights
Sometimes we have to watch videos for work, and sometimes they are boring. This can mean that we can become easily sidetracked by other projects you are working on. If you find this is the case and you need to spend more of your attention to a video, you can use the Chrome add-on Turn off the Lights. It will dim everything on your screen except for your media play so that you are visually forced to observe the video.
