Need to Focus? Block These 10 Sites
Freedom makes it very easy to block websites – with the click of a button, you can block any distracting site on your computer, phone, or tablet. With Freedom, you can block categories of websites (Social, Shopping, etc.) or block individual websites – your choice.
But what are the right websites to block? We conducted some research to identify the most popular websites blocked by Freedom users. Freedom users are highly productive – they protect and value their time by blocking distractions. So we knew it would be valuable to create a list of the 10 sites you should block to be highly productive.
Did you know? The Internet is a small place!
Before we get into the list, here are a few things we noticed when researching the most popular blocked websites. First and foremost, we noticed that the internet is actually a very small place! By this we mean – there are a small number of websites that account for a lot of our distraction. Researchers would describe this as a “power law” – where a small number of items are responsible for taking up many resources. Certain social and news websites attract a lot of eyeballs – and as a result account for a lot of the distraction that we encounter on a daily basis.
Believe it or not, this is a good thing for fighting distraction! If most of your distractions come from a small number of websites, then blocking these few websites will have a profound impact on your productivity. In other words, you don’t need to block hundreds of websites to be productive, just the few powerful ones that constantly distract you.
Variety is the spice of life
We noticed one other thing about the sites in the top 10 – they are primarily of the social and news variety. What is it about social and news that makes it so potentially addicting? Compared to other types of sites, content on news and social has a lot of variety and changes quickly. This means you can keep refreshing and getting new content – it’s a lot like pulling the lever on a slot machine. And this makes news and social sites very addicting.
Unfortunately, these sites also understand the allure of content that constantly changes. Their algorithms are tuned to give you relevant, fresh content every time you reload the page or launch an app. It’s a core part of their business model, so don’t expect it to change any time soon.
The list: Block these 10 sites
So what are the sites to block if you want to be productive? Here’s the list of most commonly blocked sites on Freedom.
To make it easy to block these sites on Freedom, we’ve created filters you can turn on for each of these sites – just press a button and you’ll be blocking the offenders. Or you can choose our category filters and block broader groups of sites: social, news, streaming – and many others. To get started, create a Freedom account and sign up for our premium plan, which allows you to block distracting websites, apps, and the entire internet on your phone, computer, and tablet. Freedom costs $29 a year and is and comes with a free trial.
PRO TIP: If you need help creating better browsing habits – try our FREE chrome extensions Pause, Limit, and Insight.
