Here’s one of my top productivity tips.

I’m not too proud to admit that sometimes I have the attention span of a toddler. I settle down for a work session, get something built, click on the deploy button and have to wait for a few minutes until it’s done… during those few minutes, I make the fatal mistake of going “oh, I’ll just check Facebook”. 

Forty five minutes later, panic sets in as I realise how much time I’ve just wasted, and I once again curse myself for being so weak. Closing Facebook doesn’t work either, I just absent-mindedly open it back up, and there goes another hour of my life down the drain… 

This has been a constant source of frustration for years, but recently I discovered an app that solves the problem perfectly for me - it flat out prevents me from wasting time on stupid websites, but only during work hours, when I want to be at full focus. 

The name of this life-changing, world-shaping app? Cold Turkey Blocker. I had a specific set of requirements as well, and this was the only app that met them all: 

1. Absolutely has to work on both Chrome and Firefox. I use both browsers, and if it doesn’t work in both, then I’d fall back into the old habits. 
2. It even works in incognito tabs! 
3. I can set it to block the sites that are the biggest time waster for me. Facebook, Reddit, Linked In and so on. 
4. As mentioned earlier, it’s not a permanent block, you can set it to only block during specific times of the day. If you’re willing to shell out for the paid version, you can even schedule these blocks, so you don’t have to remember to turn it on in the morning! 
5. It can block specific applications too, if you haven’t got the willpower to prevent yourself playing Civ 6 all day instead of working, you can block the application from even starting. 
6. You can LOCK the timers, so that once you start them, you can’t disable them, short of pulling apart the guts of your OS to work out how it’s done. If you absolutely, absolutely can’t trust yourself, this is the nuclear option. 
7. If you REALLY REALLY can’t be trusted, you can actually force lock your ENTIRE COMPUTER. If you have work to be done away from the computer, and you just can’t keep your focus, this might be the only solution left to you, short of drowning it in the bath. 
8. It doesn't support mobile devices, but that's ok for me - for some reason, I rarely get distracted by my phone. Who'd have thunk it, eh! 

There’s no doubt that Cold Turkey Blocker has improved my productivity. The number of times I flick over to the Facebook tab to see, oh, I’ve blocked it… and then go back to what I was meant to be doing - it breaks the tab flicking cycle that’s so easy to get into. This is probably the single biggest productivity tip I can give you - install Cold Turkey Blocker today, you won’t regret it, and your customers will thank you too!