Firefox, that wonderful portal to everything that the internet has to offer, has a dark side too. Besides its many great functions it’s also a debilitating time vortex, a black hole that sucks in time without reason or mercy. A simple google search or wikipedia look-up can, if you’re not careful, lead down a slippery slope of time wasting and frenzied link clicking that can leave you with dozens of tabs open and no clear idea of how you got to that point.
But there’s hope.
Below are two Firefox add ons that will help make Firefox a boost to your productivity rather than a drain on it.
GTDInbox for Gmail – This little add on makes your Gmail inbox a more productive place to work. It uses a label system to turn emails in to tasks that can be sorted, indexed, and otherwise streamlined in to categories that make your inbox easier to handle. If, for instance, you get business emails as well as personal emails in the same Gmail inbox, this is the add on you want to get.
LeechBlock - This Firefox add on does a simple thing, it blocks websites that waste your time. You define the websites, whatever the time wasters are for you, and it takes care of the rest. The simplicity is deceptive though, as there is a whole range of different options to play around with, which is always a bonus I find. You can, for example, choose to block websites within a certain range of time, like between 9 to 5 when you’re at work, or you can give yourself a certain amount of time every hour, like 10 minutes, after which you have to wait another hour to get your fix. You can also pick the days of the week you want blocked, and to simplify things, you can set up ‘sets’ of websites, so you can have the set of websites you block at work and the set of websites you block while trying to write the great American Novel, or whatever else you do in your spare time.
And Leechblock lets you block access to its own control panel as well as its config file so that you can’t go changing things when you get desperate. Which, if you’re anything like me, is a very necessary feature.
Stu is a freelance writer, but he has a special place in his heart for blogging. He also enjoys reading, cooking, and a little music now and then. You can follow him on Twitter here
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i like GTD for gmail. i am considering finally making the switch over from yahoo just to use it. does anyone know if using the gmail IMPORT feature deletes emails from yahoo? and man do i wish yahoo had free POP3 like almost every other service. still prefer yahoo’s address book however. and i kind of like the ability to have a few folders. but otherwise i love the total google integration.
will install leechblock today when i get my laptop hinges repaired. i wish there was a tab-limiting plugin.
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