Checking email, chatting with friends, looking at amusing blogs, playing flash games or MMORPGs – there are endless opportunities to procrastinate. That really takes a chunk out of your productivity.

One of the most crucial elements of time management is staying on track. Every day, we waste time and money playing online when we should be focusing on work. When that work is of a creative nature, you are even more prone to coming across something way too interesting not to lose focus – an impulse that has to be fought and fought hard, especially when a deadline is looming.

But that doesn’t mean there is no hope. You can increase your productivity and work without the distractions (or at least as many), using these three tips and a couple of helpful tools.

1. Use Distraction Management Tools

The Internet has more than just interesting things to make you lose focus. It also has tools to help you potentially combat that and get more from your day. Many of them are even free and so can save you money while you use them.

LeechBlock

It would be really great if we were able to use sheer force of will to keep us off of those sites that tempt us. But that just isn’t the way it works, unfortunately. The draw of funny cat pictures and YouTube clips can just be too much for us, and we find ourselves thinking, “Just a few minutes won’t hurt.”

But then an hour passes, and we go into panic mode. It is better to just block those sites that take up the most of our time, and LeechBlock does that. You download it as a Firefox attachment, then put in the blocked domains of your choice and the times that they should be locked out. That includes a time limit to block them out, such as a certain number of minutes per hour.

StayFocused

This extension does essentially the same thing, but for Google Chrome users. It limits the amount of time you spend on time-waster websites that you have listed yourself.

You can configure it more actively by deciding if you want a whole domain blocked or just certain areas, setting time limits for certain activities and more. You just set the amount of time, and once that has been used up you are done – it locks you out for the rest of the day.

Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk is a simple to-do list program that consists of dozens of options (online to-do list, task management, calendars, etc) and syncs up with your smartphone, PDA, tablet and other software. You set tasks on the program, it syncs with everything you register, and then it reminds you when something has to be done.

As you go through your day you tick things off your list. It even has an RSS feed tracker, a Gmail attachment and more. You will be amazed at how easy keeping a list is holding you accountable for yourself during the day.

Schedule Your Work

Setting a deadline is a great way of getting yourself on the right track and staying there. It sets a time when something needs to be started or done, and so you can just go through the motions. For example, say you have to finish a concept design for a website you have been commissioned for.

You might give yourself until the end of the week at 3 p.m. to have that concept design completed and sent out to the client.

Just make sure that your schedule is a realistic one and that everything in your day fits into it. Too many people keep separate schedules for work and home life, and then it gets thrown off when one thing intersects with the other.

Share Your Progress

Finally, hold yourself accountable by sharing your goals and progress with someone else. This could be another designer, a partner or just your client.

Make sure to show the different steps as you go along, so they can watch you making progress and you have someone to answer to. Another set of eyes can really go a long way toward making you work like you are supposed to. That is an opportunity that isn’t often afforded to freelancers or people who work from home.

Conclusion

Don’t allow distractions to keep you down. But also, don’t allow the project to become the distraction itself. Make deadlines, use tools to keep you on track and share your progress. All of this will allow you to spend the correct amount of time on each project and meet your deadlines as you are supposed to.

Just imagine, never having to ask for another extension!

Jennifer Moline writes about freelancing, small business and design for the PsPrint Blog. PsPrint is an online printing solutions company, which you can follow on Twitter.

Image credit: 1.

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3 Awesomely Simple and Effective Productivity Tips (And Tools) originally appeared on: Crenk
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I’m always looking for unique ways to manage my systems. Task apps, to-do lists, I’ve seen them all before and few offer anything unique enough to make me change the way I’m doing things right now. The status quo was changed when I came across Diacarta. Not expecting fresh approach to scheduling and seeing my list of appointments, I was quickly caught up in exploring the display, how information is shared, and the interface. It’s a beautiful app no doubt and it does offer some unique approaches to the way we organize ourselves.

Rather than seeing your day in a line item list of text, you get to create a picture of your day. The premise of the entire app is associating image icons with things that need to get done during the day. This association creates your day and plans out by the hour what your agenda will look like visually. You still type in all the necessary details for your event or task, but it only shows up if you allow your finger to linger on the icon, it disappears when you move your finger.

Diacarta is an interesting way to visualize your day to day, but is it enough to integrate into your systems? Take a look at the video below and let us know.

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Diacarta Offers Unique Scheduling Mobile App originally appeared on: Crenk
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Many of us work well under pressure. When I’m doing a long article I can often find myself procrastinating, staring into space and only working sporadically. Using a stopwatch is one of my favourite ways to boost my productivity and motivate myself to get the first draft done within a certain amount of time.

TimeMe is a huge online stopwatch which I have displayed on my second monitor as a constant reminder that the clock is ticking. It pretty much takes up the whole screen along with some basic settings. Users may also adjust timer display (size, colour, width) and sound alarm settings to fit their needs. Simple yet effective.

This is a similar tool to E.ggtimer and the likes.

However, they also offer a downloadable versions so you can run it on your desktop if you don’t like connecting to the web when working or studying. Check it out here.

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TimeMe: Cool Online Stopwatch to Increase Productivity originally appeared on: Crenk
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Recently I’ve been alerted of a way to make my Gmail productivity even more effective, and that’s with the use of Gtriage. While many of us are inundated with email after email, sometimes finding that hundreds have come into our inbox at any given time away from the computer, who wants to go through all of that?Gtriage does the work of training your inbox instantly, and over time it learns to grow with you and identify which emails are vital and which can be touched later. I won’t say it’s perfect, the key word is train, so while you have parameters to set in the beginning, it will grow with you based on how you feed it information.

Emails that it determines to be important will be labeled “IMPORTANT” and put into a singular folder that is accessible on the desktop or on your mobile. Because the application runs in the background, there’s no apps to install, no third party plugins, no anything, so desktop or mobile, everything just works. It’s a good way to never miss important messages, and if you’ve got the patience to allow it to learn your habits, can be very powerful. I’ve only been using this for a few days, but I’ll probably circle back in 30-60 days to see if it’s really learned who I am and what emails are important to me.

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Improve Gmail Productivity Instantly originally appeared on: Crenk
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Evernote 3.5 Windows in beta.

When Evernote first came out there was a lot of hype surrounding this all purpose information collector and sorter. Unlike anything that we had really seen before, Evernote allowed users to capture content either in video, internet, or photo, save it and store to the Evernote account and have all devices sync with your account. It was a great way to share information you would need later, or capture something as simple was scribbles on a napkin without actually having to carry the  napkin with you. For web surfers specifically the ability to save an entire page along with the URL or just highlighted content allowed us a new way to capture just what we needed without bookmarking an entire site. Evernote really changed the way we capture data on our mobiles and  now it gets an upgrade.

Evernote 3.5 for Windows was recently released in beta and it’s nothing significant, but does address a lot of previous annoyances. Evernote has always existed in many formats; an app, a browser button, and a desktop application rounds out how you can find Evernote. The desktop version for windows was nothing fancy, in fact it could be described as clunky, glitchy, with a UI that was not as intuitive as it could be. With it’s Apple counterpart running smooth and clean, it was a wonder why the Windows version could not mimic that same look and feel.

Some updates you will see are as follows:

• three views offered for looking at notes: List, Mixed, and Thumbnails
• geo-location tags activate a map that slides into place to show its location
• interface feels a lot more Windows 7 than its older counterparts
• search database has been improved, and you can save and edit your search filters
• multi-language spell check

So with these minor improvements we’ve seen a nicer desktop app under the hood. The application is still free, with a paid pro account alternative offering more functionality for the power users.

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Annoyances Nixed with Evernote 3.5 originally appeared on: Crenk
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Over a year after a third-party app was released for Yammer users with an Android, Yammer have decided it’s time to release their own official app to compliment their service which enables people working within a company or group to send updates as to what they’re doing which is fed into a constant stream, like Twitter.

The app can be ran in the background while you use the phone on a day to day basis. It will vibrate or make a noise when the stream is updated by a colleague answering the boilerplate Yammer question, ‘What are you doing?’

The pre-release version is still reported to contain many bugs and I doubt it will be ready until late Spring of next year.

I think that this app will make switching from the iPhone to cheaper android devices much easier. Many people depend on Apple’s device purely because of the apps – now with many alternatives in the hands of the competitors, the iPhone could be in trouble. Expect a price drop in early 2010.

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Official Yammer App for Android originally appeared on: Crenk
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Q10 is a basic word processor that looks like it’s from the early 80s. Just a black screen with basic text when you type. You can also have the noise of a typewriter as you type which I find gets the momentum going.

You can change the colour setting for the text.

There are other benefits to using this program a well. Firstly, it’s better for your eyes as there is less light to process and the text is easier to read. Also, if you’re using a laptop, because much of your screen is black you batter is spared enormously. How much power do you waste while using a word processor to light up 95% of your screen white?

You can get Q10 here.

• OpenOffice 3.3 Beta Released – August 21, 2010
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Q10 – Free, minimalistic Word Processor for Windows originally appeared on: Crenk
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Action Method was introduced this year as the premiere application to manage your projects, tasks, planning, and meetings. The application allows you to create projects, create tasks, assign tasks, and manage a calendar. If tasks are falling behind you can nudge the people to whom you assigned them to in order to remind them of deadlines. Color coding is a big winner for this app as it’s easy to find what you’re looking for with alternating colors.

Have an iPhone or iTouch? No problem, your web application syncs with your mobile app so your to-do list is never far away. Incredibly useful and sure to improve with future updates, the app is free to download, and free for up to 50 tasks, premium service for unlimited tasks comes in at $12/month or $99/year.

• Intro to New Apps Thanks to AppGiveaway – June 28, 2009
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Kick Productivity Into High Gear with ActionMethod originally appeared on: Crenk
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Mac users rejoice, the new version of Evernote has just been released. Version 1.1.4 can be updated from the “Check for Updates” command from the Evenote menu.

For a break down of what this version brings to you, read the release notes.

Evernote is an effective way of making sure you never forget your ideas. With the ability to catch your ideas no matter where they are, a napkin, online, a street sign, a window posting, capture it all with Evernote. Evernote also links across your laptop, your desktop and your mobile so you are never far from the inspiration you seek.

You can read a full review of Evernote here.

• Annoyances Nixed with Evernote 3.5 – January 26, 2010
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Evernote Update Released originally appeared on: Crenk
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