(But if you want to read this article first, I won’t tell your boss.)

Let’s be honest—no matter how hard you try to focus on the task at hand, certain websites have a mysterious gravitational power that you sometimes (just about always) don’t have the willpower to fight. One minute you’re doing research for that looming project, and the next you’re commenting “congrats” on your friend’s new baby picture or shooting coffee out of your nose over the latest Fail. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, please don’t look it up—it will only get you into trouble).

I like to think I’m pretty good at managing my time, but I’ve had one too many “quick Facebook checks” turn into 15-20 minute breaks that only add to the length of my work day. Figuring someone smarter than me already found a solution to this, I checked Chrome’s extensions store for an add-on that would help me stay focused. And, what do you know—a free extension called StayFocusd awaited me. I saw the impressive 5-star rating out of 1300 reviews, so I decided to try it. After a few days of using it, I decided I had to share it.

Step 1: Limiting the Distraction
Here’s the deal: you adjust the settings to choose which sites are under restriction (aka “blocked,”), and the maximum time allowed for those sites. I immediately added Facebook and Failblog, because those two sites are way too easy to get lost in. StayFocusd has its own expansive list of suggestions for sites to block as well, but I’m sure you have a pretty good idea of what sites are most distracting to you. Then, I set a time limit of 10 minutes for both.

Step 2: Keeping it Real
If you’re like me and your work computer is also your personal computer, it may not be realistic to have such restricting limits on “free time” sites all the time. Fortunately, you can choose specific days and hours that the extension will monitor your time use, and the daily reset time. I entered in my typical work days and hours, and set my reset time for 5:00PM, the same as my ending work time.

Excuses Meet Snarky Popup Windows
What I appreciate most about this extension is its attitude. For instance, when I experimentally tried to bump up my time limit from 10 to 15 minutes, I was met with this series of windows:

(Aha, now the picture at the top makes sense!) Then, when I moved it back down, I was met with this complimentary message:

If you run out of time for the day (I have mine set to give me a 5- and 1-minute warning) your blocked website screen will look something like this:

The World Wide…War
Perhaps you just want to block sites altogether for a certain amount of time—if that’s the case, choose The Nuclear Option, which is not reversible once you hit the “NUKE ‘EM!” button and hopefully will prevent you from lollygagging.

Like Crossing a Bridge With A Troll
Oh, but there’s more. If your willpower isn’t strong enough to avoid changing the settings, it can optionally require you to complete a difficult (but not impossible) challenge before changing any settings. I don’t know for sure what each challenge is (Do a backflip? Run a marathon?), but the example challenge is to type a sobering paragraph about procrastination with zero errors and no corrections allowed.

Altogether, StayFocusd is quite an ingenious (though snarky) extension that has proven to be quite handy for condensing my work day.

Now, you may get back to work.