5 Best Browser Extensions to BOOST your Productivity
Today we've got the next post in my personal development series all about productivity and life hacks! These things are going to be the most important things to improve your sanity, and, for today in particular, your productivity!
If you haven't yet, check out the first post about Goal-Setting!
This post covers productivity browser extensions to help you BOOST your BROWSER and thus, BOOST your productivity! We spend SO much time on the internet, whether we're networking, researching, working, etc. But, at the same time the internet can be SUCH a time-suck. There's so many distractions and so many ways in which internet marketers try to suck us in!
Here, I've got a list of my absolute favorite productivity apps that have enhanced my internet browsing experience and my productivity, even on distracting websites like facebook! Check them out below!
**Note: I do use Google Chrome. All of these extensions are add-ons to Google Chrome. I'm not sure of their availability on other web browsers, but as I have the time I will add that information in.
Also, I am not an affiliate of Google Chrome or any of the companies that developed these products and add-ons! I'm just an extremely satisfied user that wanted to share these extensions with you all!! **
Rescue Time.
Part of optimizing your productivity is understanding where you are now, which is why discovering Rescue Time was a huge deal for me. No longer can I use the excuse of forgetting how I spent my time to fool myself into thinking that I've been productive! Once you add Rescue Time to your browser, it catalogs all of it for you!
Rescue Time serves as a great analytics tools for not only seeing where you start, but how you're progressing! Nothing is more gratifying than seeing that percent productivity score go up! Plus, the team at Rescue Time has worked out how to pair Rescue Time with a bunch of other applications so that you can use your productivity data most effectively! Applications like...
BeeMinder for motivation and goal tracking
Zapier for tracking completed to-dos, sent mail to optimize time spent in email accounts, creating a daily summary email, etc.
Zenobase for determining patterns in productivity, sleep, and exercise
Many More!
There's lots of ways to use Rescue Time! I'm still figuring out how I'd like to use my Rescue Time data, but for now I love that it has shown me the time of day that I'm most productive (9-11am!!) so that I can make sure to use that time as effectively as possible!
It does take a little bit of optimizing and customization for certain activities. For example, when I'm working on this website, Rescue Time categorizes it as "very unproductive," which we all know isn't true! :-) The more you use it, the more you'll know how to tweak it and make it work for you! It is such an informative tool, and I have gotten so much more productive since adding it to my work and personal computers!
Adding RecueTime to my Browser has allowed me to categorize websites into productive and unproductive categories so that I can see how I'm spending my time and if my productivity is increasing! This week showed a 10% increase from the week before!
Adding RecueTime to my Browser has allowed me to categorize websites into productive and unproductive categories so that I can see how I'm spending my time and if my productivity is increasing! This week showed a 10% increase from the week before!
Momentum.
Momentum might be my new favorite find! I originally heard about it on Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Work Week Blog and thought it would be a nifty thing to try!
Well, pretty much as soon as I added it to my browser I was in love! I'm all about landscape images and backgrounds, so the beautiful images that all of a sudden were the backdrop of my "New Tab" screen were a huge hit for me. But, more so than just being aesthetically pleasing, Momentum is VERY functional. There's something incredibly motivating and focusing about having a reminder of your Focus for the day, as well as your To-do List, every single time you open a new tab. Opening a new tab used to be a very dangerous thing for me, because ADD, "Oh! Look a shiny object!" Ellyn would come out and I'd end up randomly internet browsing! That has been cut down significantly since installing momentum. I'm a huge fan!
Every time you open a "New Tab" on Chrome - this is what you're greeted with! Much better than the boring old New Tab screen!
Nanny for Chrome.
Nanny for Chrome is like my god-send! I discovered this add-on to Google Chrome when I was listening to a productivity podcast. They mentioned an app called Leech Block that helps to block websites during specific hours of the day, but this was an app for Firefox. I use Google Chrome primarily, so I started Googling Chrome substitutes for that app and I stumbled across Nanny for Chrome! It had great reviews and ratings so I decided to give it a whirl! And I LOVE IT! Now, there are a number of apps that do similar things, but I have become obsessed with Nanny for Chrome! Let me list some of my favorite aspects.
You can tell it which websites you want to prevent access to and when you want access prevented
It is NOT easy to cheat this app! There's a REALLY long alpha numeric code that you have to enter exactly, that you can't copy and that does not repeat! So, there really is NOT simple work-around when you want to go to your unproductive websites!
And this is silly, but it's something that I love about it - every time you try to go to one of your blocked sites it comes up with this little screen that says "Shouldn't you be working?" (shown below!). Everytime it comes up, I find myself saying "Okay Nanny...way to guilt trip me into no-longer procrastinating!" Somehow that little reminder totally works!
Nothing fancy, but I love that not only can you BLOCK certain websites at certain times of day, but that Nanny not-so-subtly guilt trips you for you procrastination....
News Feed Eradicator
One of the biggest time-suck aspects of Facebook for me is scrolling the News Feed! Even as someone who uses Facebook and social media as a tool for promoting my coaching business, there's nothing productive about scrolling the News Feed! Which is why discovering this app was a freaking life saver! News Feed Eradicator is amazing like that! Once you install it, it does exactly what it suggests - eradicates your news feed! But the best part? It replaces your news feed with motivating quotes, and as you know I'm a sucker for those!
No more getting lost in your Facebook newsfeed - News Feed Eradicator replaces the black hole of facebook with some positive motivation!
Evernote Web Clipper.
ECLP Web Clipper Articles all organized and searchable in my Evernote "Organization" notebook!
I am an avid user of Evernote! So much so that I upgraded beyond the free version! I use it to organize all of my Beachbody materials, templates, information, etc. I even use it for tons of note-taking and reading things for school and for lab! Lately, however, I have found even more of a reason to love the seamless-ness that is Evernote's integration in the Evernote Web Clipper!
Now, I may be a research scientist but I do web research all the time on tons of other things as well - everything from sleep hacking to productivity and organizational strategies, to Erin Condren Life Planner organizational ideas. I'm constantly googling stuff. If I found something I wanted to save and come back to, I'd usually pin it to a Pinterest board. But,finding that pin again was often VERY difficult if I didn't put something in the caption that made it identifiable, which I often don't. Enter the Evernote Web Clipper!
This thing is perfect for web research with ease! I used to toggle back and forth between my google search, websites, and an Evernote note where I would paste in link to refer back to. Now, I can just use the Web Clipper to directly link that important content into an Evernote Notebook dedicated to the subject! It's a piece of cake! And gives me more reason to Google to my hearts content! :-)
I used this tool a lot as I was getting ideas for how I wanted to use my Erin Condren Life Planner! You can pick whether you want the whole article, whether you want to clip part of it, etc. The Clipper also let's you easily choose where you want fi…
Well - that's all for now! These are my 5 favorite Web Extensions for Google Chrome to BOOST your productivity while browsing!
Other great, non-productivity related (but still highly convenient) extensions include:
1 Passwordfor Password management and security
Buffer for quick and convenient content sharing to your social media networks
Sidekick by Hubspot for contact insight and email receipt management
That's it for this time! I hope you found a new tool that can help you solve a productivity problem in your own browsing, so that you can BOOST your browsing experience!