Two More Tools That Can Help Students Stay Focused on Online Tasks

On Friday morning I shared a browser extension called BeTimeful that limits your access to social media sites during your working hours. As I wrote in that blog post, there are similar tools worth noting. Here's a short overview of some tools that can help students remove distractions and stay focused while working online.

StayFocusd is a Chrome extension that I've used for years whenever I feel like I'm falling into the bad habit of chasing rabbit holes on the internet. StayFocusd lets me specify the sites that I want to block from myself or limit my time spent viewing them. After specifying the sites and the amount of time I'll allow myself on them, a countdown timer appears whenever I view those sites. The timer resets every 24 hours.

Pomofocus is a task timer that is based on the Pomodoro method of getting things done. On Pomofocus I create a list of tasks then start the timer. Each task is allotted 25 minutes (you can adjust that). After 25 minutes there is a five minute break timer that automatically appears. After the break the next task timer appears.