Procrastination and time wasting are, in many ways, easier traps for web workers to fall into than they are for many other kinds of workers. You’ve probably seen the alarming numbers on how much time Internet connected workers tend to waste on everything from personal surfing to reading online news. If you use Firefox all day, install the free MeeTimer extension to start taking control of your time sinks.(God knows I need it bad and maybe you do too!)
MeeTimer keeps a running log of the amount of time you spend on each visit to web sites. It sits in your Firefox tray at the bottom of the screen, and your log can be pulled up at any time by hovering your mouse arrow over a small “T” in the tray. You group the sites you visit by the type of activity they represent: procrastination, search, work, communication, etc.
If the application sounds like Big Brother, it does have more than a trace of surveillance to it, but you can control how you choose to have it behave. If you want, you can keep it very tame and just occasionally take a look at your log to get an aerial view of how much time you spend on non-work activities. In that case, it’s essentially a productivity tool.
Or, if you want to go a step further, you can choose to have MeeTimer attempt to deter from you from visiting sites that are helping you procrastinate and waste time. Note that it does not force you away from such sites; instead, it issues a gentle reminder. If you choose to have it deter you, MeeTimer will black out pages as you load them and give you the option to close the tabs for them. It even displays a summary of how much time you’ve wasted at the site that week as a percentage of your work week: “14 percent of your work week,” etc. You can go ahead and view the page if you want, but you get the reminder first.
MeeTimer does a pretty good job of offering up surprises about how you work. If you’re like most web workers you’ll find the number of work week hours that MeeTimer determines you spend procrastinating is much higher than you tend to think. I also find it surprising to look at how much time I spend on web searches. Then again, maybe a little time wasting while working is okay with you.
Do you have any good tips on time management for web workers?
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