New computer app keeps you on task

Anyone with a mouse and Internet connection knows how easy it is to waste time online.

What was supposed to be a few minutes visiting websites turns into an hour or two.

The Internet is turning some Americans into mouse clicking zombies.
“Before you know it, an hours gone by and you’re going through a bunch of stuff when you thought it was only going to be 5 minutes,“ said user Raffi Agapeckyon.

Which is why Agapeckyon has downloaded an app called self control.

It allows him to enter the websites that waste his time most.
Select a duration and for that amount of time, self control blocks him from those websites.
So he can pay attention to more important things like work.

“It helps me stay focused on conference calls and I’m not out browsing on internet or things like that,“ said Agapeckyon.
Dr. Lenora Yuen is a Palo Alto psychologist and author of a book on how to deal with procrastination.

We’re so easily distracted because the doctor says our brains our wired for novelty which is exactly what the Internet offers.

“That rather than staying with ideas and going deep into them, we want to skim the surface. We kind of jump from idea to idea to idea. The Internet is kind of like sugar. You have a taste and you crave more of it,“ said psychologist Dr. Lenora Yuen.

And apparently, many employees do. Salary.com found that visiting non-work related websites was the most common time waster on the job last year.  Costing billions of dollars in lost productivity. As a matter of fact, a fifth of respondents say they waste up to 2 hours a day online.

Now Raffi’s not that bad. 

Just ask his wife. 

Her gripe is his cell phone. 

She wishes there was a self-control app for those things. 

We just can’t understand why.
“Self control” is just one app that allows you to police your internet usage.