2. STOP WASTING TIME ONLINE
It’s time to learn and you’re eager to get started! You switch your computer on, poised over the keyboard, ready to rock and roll.
Then you think:
I might just quickly check my emails.
An hour later you’ve organised your inbox, created a new playlist on Spotify, stalked your ex on Facebook and spent a good ten minutes wondering what that unidentified $17 payment on your bank statement could possibly be.
That’s a whole hour which could have been otherwise spent learning adverbs, practising pronunciation, speaking with a language exchange partner… anything other than wasting time on the Internet.
In a world where an individual’s attention span lasts as little as nine seconds, it is incredibly challenging to motivate yourself to focus on the task at hand.
It would be nice, of course, to simply use a bit of self-control. Yet sometimes we need a little extra help.
If you find yourself easily distracted while online, consider installing an extension on your browser that forces you to keep on task. StayFocusd for the Chrome web browser is perfect for this. Once installed, you can configure it to restrict the amount of time you spend on certain websites. For example, if I were to allocate myself ten minutes a day on Facebook, after I had reached the time allowance StayFocusd would block Facebook until the end of the day. If you’re using Firefox rather than Chrome, Leechbox does the exact same thing.