As we have all experienced it, the internet is the ultimate productivity killer (in fact, many of you may be experiencing it right now). We’ll get on to check our email and suddenly, 45 minutes later, we’ve updated our Facebook status, watched three YouTube videos, and stalked our favorite artist’s Twitter page. With all of its usefulness and ingenuity, the World Wide Web certainly has made it easy to lose track of time, initiative, and goals. These three websites are the best of the best when it comes to wasting time and losing focus.
1. StumbleUpon: Essentially designed for the inattentive, StumbleUpon is the ultimate time waster. With endless blogs, websites, games, pictures, videos, and more, StumbleUpon is designed to customize your web experience to your interests and preferences. First, as a stumble user you will go through a long list of interests and activities, indicating the ones fit your personality best. Then by clicking the “stumble” button, you are sent to a website that falls within your selected interests. You can indicate that you “like” or “dislike” the site and then Stumble will respond to your answer. This means that with every site you visit, Stumble gains a better understanding of what you would like to see. Eventually, you will be Stumbling for hours finding other websites to waste even more time on.
2. Reddit: As one of the most used web forums in the world, Reddit is a strangely “underground” community. With varying topics covering virtually anything you can think of, Reddit gathers people from all around the world to post threads and comment on threads. Users create an account (for free of course) and can post websites, pictures, videos, questions, stories, anything and then discuss them with other users. Threads are ranked by the users and then posted to the front page based on their ranking. While Reddit may take some time to really get into, once you are in it is impossible to leave. Reddit is endless. You can find a thread on virtually any topic imaginable, ranging from the mundane to the academic to the downright strange.
3. Pandora: For individuals who like to do work with music playing in the background, Pandora Radio can be a useful resource. However, Pandora can also become an easy distraction. Make a free account with Pandora and create customizable radio stations that are based off of the songs you like. Type in your favorite artist and listen to songs by that artist as well as other artists that are similar to them. If you hear a song that you like, you can indicate that you like it and Pandora will work to find songs even more similar to it. This music site does a fabulous job of finding great music that fits to your likes and dislikes. But, with extensive biographies on your favorite bands to read, this site has the potential for major distraction.
About the Author
Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email address: alvina.lopez@gmail.com
Good article even though done by a guest writer. But I’m curious; this is the second article that I’ve seen “Posted by RT Cunningham” but actually written by someone else. I thought (RT) that you had some sort of system in place to have guest posters do the posting under ‘their’ own profile.
I’ve actually used that Guest Profile option in the past (albeit only once or twice) to find other articles written by another person on your site.
I’m changing my M.O. I’m only doing putting them under their own profile when they don’t include an author section in the post.