Stop procrastination on the internet

6 November, 2009 in the category english, life, web by Konrad.

A few days ago, I wondered how I could stop myself from procrastinating on the internet. After searching for a while I discovered a little userscript (also called Greasemonkey-Script) that prevents you from browsing specified sites (like Facebook) before 8pm.

I modified it a little bit so you can easily change the message it throws at you when you still try to navigate on the blocked sites; and you can now specify a start time, so you are no longer blocked immediately after midnight (and I prefer to be able to surf freely after work even after midnight).

So here it is: Stop procrastination by invisibility-cloak.user.js

Installation should be easy on modern browsers. Nevertheless I have some hints:

Google Chrome: on newer versions, this should work out-of-the-box as far as I know.
Google Chrome/Chromium on Linux: You have to look at the folder ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/User Scripts/ and put the file there. Then you launch chrome with the command-line options “–enable-greasemonkey –enable-user-scripts –enable-extensions” (of course, without the “”).
Firefox: Use the Greasemonkey plugin
Internet Explorer and Safari: There are extensions such as “Trixie”, “Greasemonkey IE” and so on. I don’t use Windows or OS X, so look at this blogpost instead.

To configure the script, open it with some plain-text editor, like notepad, gedit, kedit, vim, emacs, whatever you like (but not Microsoft Word). It’s really easy to edit this userscript, don’t hesitate! The default configuration is listed below:
// @name Invisibility Cloak // @description Turns time-wasting web pages invisible for a specified time period. // @include http://*.youtube.*/* // @include http://*.myspace.*/* // @include http://*.twitter.*/* // @include http://*.craigslist.org/* // @include http://*.orkut.*/* // @include http://*.hi5.com/* // @include http://*.facebook.com/* // @include http://www.xing.com/* // @include http://www.linkedin.com/* // @include http://www.studivz.net/* // @include http://*.cnet.com/* // @include http://reader.google.*/* // @include http://www.google.*/reader/view/* // @include http://*.analytics.google.com/* // @include http://www.google.com/analytics/* // @include http://www.google.com/adsense/* // @include http://www.google.com/webmasters/* // @include http://www.amazon.*/gp/yourstore/* // @include http://mathoverflow.net/* // @include http://*.heise.de/*
where I have selected the websites to block partly because of their high Alexa rank and partly because I like them (too much).

The time specification is configured in another section and defaults to “from 8am to 8pm is work time”:
var surf_time_after = 20; // after this time, you can visit the blocked websites var surf_time_before = 8; // after this time, the websites specified above are blocked var message_begin = "Relaxing on the 'net is okay after"; var message_end = "but right now, you should continue (or even start) working on something useful!";

And if you still have any questions, please write a comment below.

Credits go to Gina Trapani who released a first version 2006-01-03 to the public domain. This version is released to public domain, too.

Look at userscripts.org for more userscripts.