Top 5 Distractions on the Web

Always is the case that whenever I’m trying to be productive online / on my computer by doing stuff like trying to; Finish up an old website, add new content, write a post, design a banner… whatever; That I can’t help but immediately get distracted. A lot!

This is a bit frustrating because I tend to start something, complete an iota of it, minimize it for a second then find myself in the same place 4 hours later. It’s a cycle habit that I really need to break.

I’ve got about 8 posts in draft at the moment. Most half finished or just started, this is because I start writing then someone will start a conversation on MSN or I’ll just veer off into a world of disaullisioned, pointless inactivity.

Below I’ve listed the source of 90% of my main distractions when trying to work. Or more presicely, the top 5 distraction sources that result in inactivity on my part. I’ve given each one a distraction rating out of 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest.

MSN Messenger

Everybody knows MSN and any type of instant messenger / AIM is very distracting. Unless you’re a complete sociopath.

I don’t chat on MSN that much but if I’m doing work, somebody who starts a conversation almost, provides me with an excuse to not do what I’m focusing on. And for some weird reason even though I rarely talk about anything worth talking about on MSN, I can’t seem to bring myself to sign out!

But, MSN does just get tedious after a little while, I can quite happily just ignore someone whilst doing something very important. I might just stop MSN from starting up when my computer boots up though so that I don’t even think about it and get on with things.

Distraction rating - 4/10.

Google News

Pretty much the only real resource for news you need. Google nicely condense any news worth mentioning into categories and usually only publish interesting news. Unless of course you want real industry specific news, whereby there are better resources for certain topics.

I find Google News a strange distraction though; Even after I’ve read all the news I want to read, I can’t seem to be bothered to avert my eyes from the page, contiously scrolling up and down, reading the same articles, jumping different categories. It’s quite distracting.

Again though, like MSN, there is a limit to it’s distractiveness, after a while you will bore yourself stupid and should be able to stay off the news pages for a while.

Distraction rating - 6/10.

Wikipedia

Now, I’m not being funny, but I can literally waste hours reading various Wikipedia articles. I’m not an avid reader, I like to read interesting articles now and then but I don’t lose my time in blogs or books. But my God, Wikipeida is like a fisherman with a rod, I’m the fish!

I can start reading an article about someone interesting just for the sake of it. Such as… Richard Dawkins for example and then just get sucked in for ages jumping from article to article via links in that 1 article.

I have to commend the creator of Wikipedia, it’s a brilliant idea. Purely brilliant. And when you actually think of the idea itself, like; If somebody told me they were going to make an online encyclopedia which anyone could edit and that it would end up as a serious reputable source of information… I’d think they were an idiot.

On the outset, it just doesn’t sound like it can work since you’d naturally assume that given the amount of ill-informed people, bigots and just plain stupid people in the world, anyone could just sneak in irrelvent, mythical or otherwise silly nonsense into credible articles.

This isn’t the case however. I’m always amazed at how accurate Wikipedia is, it’s truly one of the most useful sites on the Internet. Upon mentioning Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist), Even he said he was shocked at how accurate the articles on evolutionary biology are.

I think the Wikipedia owner(s) have done incredibly well and resisted temptation of advertising yet still managed to make some well deserved cash from donations.

Distraction rating - 8/10.

YouTube

One of the most popular, if not THE most popular (after Google) sites on the Internet. And for good reason.

YouTube was the first real pioneer in online video distribution. It wasn’t the first to actually do it, as many think, but it was the first to fully socially embrace video upload on a mass scale and produce; Essentially, one big gigantic TV.

You now of course have plenty of social video sites such as; DailyMotion, Revver and of course the massively popular BBC iPlayer to name a few. But YouTube is still king.

Like Wikipedia and all good sites intended to keep your attention for longer than 10 minutes, YouTube is very well layed out. Constantly improving and keeping visitors for longer with that one absolutely essential method of ’spider webbing’ content.

This isn’t an official term as far as I’m aware although I’m sure likeminded people have used this metaphor; Basically I just mean linking site content to site content, creating a spider web like effect.

I can be watching a video on YouTube and a certain keyword in the title, description or tags will trigger a different set of videos further down in the related videos, to which I’ll click one of and then a keyword there will trigger another set and so on. It can be quite hard to pull yourself away sometimes.

By the way, I’m not talking about regular YouTuber’s videos. I really couldn’t care less what a person who I don’t know or have any interest in happen to do with their day or what they fed their dog.

Essentially, I’m talking about… copyright videos to be honest. TV Shows, interviews with interesting people… It can all get quite addictive. I think I watched 3 1 hour interviews in a row with Quentin Tarantino before.

YouTube can be obsessively distrative if you’re trying to work but don’t quite know what to do next.

Distraction rating - 9/10.

Google Video

I’ve listed Google Video higher than YouTube on the distraction scale not because it’s more popular, as it isn’t, or that it does a better job at ’spider webbing’ content: It doesn’t. But more to the point of the length of the videos.

YouTube still has a limit, you can only upload videos up to 10 minutes in length. Google Video doesn’t limit this, there’s plenty of videos on there well over an hour long.

Because of this I find it even harder to pull myself away because there’s more interesting videos. And of course because YouTube is owned by Google now, Google Video also incoperates YouTube listed videos as part of results as well as the ones actually hosted on Google Video.

Distraction rating of 10 out of 10!