Procrastination has been my arch enemy ever since I started IM. Come to think about it, it was my arch enemy ever since I had to do something. Going to school, college, assignments, studying for tests. You name it and I procrastinated it.

Until I started doing something real, I never gave any thought to this buddy of mine, because I never used to give a damn about my productivity before I started IM.

But now, I realize how hard it is to actually succeed in something unless you have good time management skills and are able to stop procrastinating.

 So I started searching for articles and information on time management skills and other stuff. There are a lot of websites which provide good information and one of them is mindtools.com

One of the interesting points that I noted was "procrastination is a habit". It has developed over the past 10 years of  delayed assignments and procrastinating studying and other tasks. So it needs to be treated like a habit. It is hard to get rid of and to get rid of it completely you will have to "Not procrastinate" for 21 days continuously. I read somewhere that 21 days is the magic no.

I am sure you all are familiar with the techniques of making a to do list and following it and other things like that. So I am not going to bore you with that stuff.

Today however, I realized that it was the distractions on the internet that are responsible for a lot of time wasted. facebook for instance is one of the biggest.

So, I decided to find a solution for this. And today, I did come up with two very good techniques to keep you on track while you are working.

 1. Blocking websites that kill time. I realized that I tend to open up websites like facebook and digg involuntarily. I do a small task related IM and then opened these sites without even thinking twice. And the next thing you know, I've wasted half an hour reading status updates. 

The trick is to make your mind realize that you are opening facebook and wasting time. How do you do that?

you block the website. It can be unblocked easily. But you will have to consciously make a decision to unblock it. And unless you have completed all the important tasks, you will most probably won't do it.

Here is how you block a website. I use Vista, but I am pretty sure it's the same for XP and windows 7 (sorry mac users)

Find the file named hosts in this folder C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

The file doesn't have an extension. If you are using Vista, you cannot edit the file directly from over there. So you will need to copy the file to some other directory, say my documents.

Now open the file using notepad and add this line at the end of it.

0.0.0.0 facebook.com myspace.com

add as many websites as you will like to block in the same line.

Now save the file. Copy and paste it back to folder it was above. It will ask whether you want to replace, select replace the file.

Now whenever, you open facebook involuntarily it will not open and you will have to think whether you want to continue working or waste time on facebook.

If you want to unblock the website, just repeat the procedure and remove the line from the file.

If you are having problems with wasting time on these distractions then I strongly suggest you do it. Give these websites a certain time of the day  and unblock them for that period of time. After that block them again.

2. A brilliant little software called timesnapper

Goto timesnapper.com and download this small software.

This software takes a snapshot of your screen every 15 seconds or so. It's very light and doesn't take up any RAM.

So at the end of the day, you can look back and see what you have done the entire day. You will be surprised to find out how much time you were working and how much time you were wasting (at least I was).

Since there is no peer pressure in working at home, and peer pressure is a very good way to stop procrastinating and improving productivity, this timesnapper can give you a sort of peer pressure feeling.

Now you know someone is watching you and you will try to be more productive so at the end of the day, you can look back and say "that was a good day".

I hope these two little tips will help you improve your productivity and work much more effectively