10 Biggest Online Time Wasters, and 6 Strategies for Beating Them

Before we get into the list of time-wasters, let’s take a look at 6 strategies to beat time-wasters and keep yourself on task.
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 you 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 OUR E-MAILS, 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.

OK, we’ve identified some strategies for dealing with these time-wasters, so let’s take a look at them. Please note: if you haven’t already visited one of these time-wasters, I’d advise that you don’t do so now, especially if you have work to do.

1.CHAT
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.

2. FACEBOOK

Today I have been sent five drinks, a glitterball and a kitten. I discovered that my friend Amit has been shopping and bought seven tops, Rajiv is frustrated with Delhi’s buses and Rajneet has become a blood donor.& I know that Avneet’s joined a book club.

On top of all this, I’ve helped market Bryan adams new album, added my thoughts to the “kick out illegal immigrants n between I’ve poked a few mates, despatched a couple of superlatives and been involved in a food fight. Oh, and I’ve asked over a million people on the London network: Should bosses ban Facebook?

Frankly, it’s been an exhausting five hours. What must it be like for the majority of Facebook junkies with an average of 100 “friends” each who apparently spend hours every day surfing the UK’s fastest-growing social utility network?

3.ORKUT

The king of useless sites. Orkut is becoming the most popular and dangerous site in the world. People are becoming addicts to Orkut. The main reason why Orkut is the most popular dating site (though the creators don’t like it to be called a dating site, it IS, OF COURSE a dating site) is that it is kept FREE till date. Unlike other dating sites, there is no premium membership. Lots and lots of complaints are being made against Orkut. Particularly from India. The creators have to do something to stop Orkut being misused.

4. YOUTUBE

Addiction at its peak. It is like drug. Can find anything in video format there in Youtube. Again, one can spend hours and hours in youtube. I was seeing Mr Bean clips for 6 hours non stop! Piracy is freely supported in Youtube. They dont seem to worry about this growing problem. 70% of the videos uploaded here are pirated. They simply dont want to stop it. Can anyone deny it?

5. FLICKER

This is a photo supermarket. Millions of photos. Wide variety of cultures. People from all over the world have photos uploaded there. From all continents. Great photographs. The human nature of getting interested in what happens in next door makes this site one of the most visited.

6. YAHOO GAMES

If you are the one that likes to get challenged by human players, this is the place for you. Interactive games at its best. Pool game is so addictive. So realistic. I have played it all night, many nights

7. MINICLIPS

It has 1000s of games. Covers all categories. Fun is never ending. So do the Ads. Shit loads of ads all around! Just like a fish market All flash based mini games. Easy playing but yet so addictive.

8. GOOGLE-EARTH

If you start SEARCHING your home in google earth, you will not end up doing only that. Will start searching for all known placed in your area. The pleasure you get when you identify known places, it feels like magic. It feels like you are driving physically on the roads.

9. MYSPACE

Keep on browsing profiles. You will not realize that you have spent hours on it. The site doesn’t need introduction. More often, people browse through profiles just to see photos. Such an useless time killer. Tell me honestly, how many users browse this site just to get connected to people? It is spoiling youth by letting people create obscene profiles.

10. STUMBLE UPON

If you are not sure what site to browse, SU is the place for you. Millions of pages indexed. You are sure to bump on one of it. Can customize categories. Can browse videos, images and many more.