Illustrated by Austin Watts.
The Internet is full of things that distract us, what with its social media sites, more .GIFs than we could ever hope for, and videos of former Disney stars on construction equipment. Remember in college when you'd actually have to deactivate your Facebook account during finals week to get stuff done? Now that you're a full-blown adult, you probably find that you still face this same problem, except you're at work. Luckily, there are now two solutions that don't require you to call it quits.
One of these lifesavers is StayFocusd, a Chrome extension that lets you create a list of sites that take away from your work day, like Facebook. You can set a time limit for these sites, or block them entirely during a certain period. If you're not ready to give up your web wanderings entirely, you can opt for the other program, LeechBlock. This Firefox add-on is similar to StayFocusd, but is more formulaic: You tell it how many minutes you're allowed to browse those sites per hour.
You can get as extreme as you'd like with the other options Wired suggests, but these seem like good starting points. Now, the only willpower you'll have to exercise is against your iPhone. That Instagram is a real rabbit hole.
(Wired)