If like me, you work for yourself online, you don’t need me to tell you how easy it is to blow valuable working time on visiting websites that have nothing to do with your work or business.
Sites that are basically just a time suck or a complete waste of time and which do nothing to bring you forward. Like forums for example.
Maybe you might resolve to yourself that you won’t waste your time visiting these sites anymore. From now on, you’re going to concentrate 100 percent conscientiously on your business activity online and not get waylaid by forums and the like which draw you in and cause you to fritter your time away.
OK, we all need a little light diversion or entertainment now and then. But working online does place too many easy temptations in your way and it’s only the most strong-willed amongst us who can honestly say that they can resist all this.
You don’t have a boss and nor do you have corporate policies laying down what sites you can and can’t visit during your working hours and for how long.
You will either need to be very strong-willed – or else you need an effective way to manage yourself.
So how about a simple, easy and what’s more, free way to ban yourself from visiting sites that are just a time suck?
Here’s how to do it…
The description below works for Windows computers using Google Chrome. But the same principle should in theory work with other browsers and other operating systems.
Open the hosts file in Windows – using Notepad. The hosts file is usually located under c:windowssystem32driversetc
Add the following two lines for each site that you want to block yourself from accessing:
127.0.0.1 <web address of the site>
127.0.0.1 webcache.<web address of the site>
For example, if I want to stop myself from being able to visit www.timesuck.com, then I would enter:
127.0.0.1 www.timesuck.com
127.0.0.1 webcache.timesuck.com
You can enter as many sites as you like.
Then save the hosts file.
Clear your browser cache in Google Chrome or whatever browser you are using (if you don’t do this, then your browser will simply fetch the website from your computer’s cache).
You should now find that the website is blocked when you try to access it.
If not, then you may need to reboot your PC as well.
Of course, it’s possible to find ways round this if you’re determined to. You can always go back into the hosts file and just comment out or delete the appropriate line of the relevant website when you want to be a naughty boy (or girl) and then go and access it. Alternatively you can find out the IP address of the banned site and enter that in your browser.
Don’t forget either that this method is specific to the PC or laptop on which you have edited the hosts file. It doesn’t stop you from accessing the sites from another machine or your mobile!
But the above method is a quick and easy way to stop yourself from wasting time on websites that you don’t really need to spend time on. As long as you accept it and play along as you should, then it will work fine.
By the way, this is also an ideal way for parents to prevent their children from visiting sites that they’d rather they didn’t.
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