productivity

Commit to Writing Blog Posts with Post or Pay

November 23, 2020 by Erica Martin 1 Comment

Have you ever found it hard to sit down and write a blog post? As someone who owns three websites, two which have blogs on them, I know how hard it can be to sit down and commit yourself to write. There are a few different websites that provide incentives people to complete different goals every week, like Beeminder, but those websites can be used for more than just blog posts. Also, they don’t require any proof that you accomplished your goal. Recently, I found out about a new website where you can set goals to write blog posts for your website, called Post or Pay. I’ll talk more about it in this post.

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How to Use Notion to Organize Your Work from Home Life

February 12, 2019 by Erica Martin Leave a Comment

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know how much I love Evernote. Recently I discovered a new application called Notion that I’ve started using to keep track of certain types of information. It’s almost as good as Evernote, but not quite. In this post, I’ll explain what Notion is, and how you can use it to keep your work from home life organized. [Read more…] about How to Use Notion to Organize Your Work from Home Life

Improve Productivity in Google Chrome With Raindrop

August 13, 2018 by Erica Martin Leave a Comment

Recently I read this article, which explained how to set up Chrome for productivity. One extension I learned about that’s helped me increase my productivity is Raindrop. I’ve only been using it for a while, but I’ve found it to be a great way to increase my productivity in Chrome, so I wanted to explain how to install it and set it up on Chrome. [Read more…] about Improve Productivity in Google Chrome With Raindrop

Challenge Yourself to Meet Your Writing Goals with Draft and Beeminder

July 24, 2017 by Erica Martin Leave a Comment

If you write for a living, it’s important to set yourself goals for how many words you want to write per day and per week. It’s also helpful to have a way to challenge yourself to meet those goals. Recently I found an interesting way to do just that using two websites – Draft and Beeminder. [Read more…] about Challenge Yourself to Meet Your Writing Goals with Draft and Beeminder

Stay Focused with FocusMe

July 12, 2016 by Erica Martin Leave a Comment

Do you have problems focusing on the project you’re supposed to be working on? Do you find yourself going to websites you shouldn’t be on during the time you’re supposed to be working? Luckily there are several different websites and programs that can help you focus on what you’re supposed to be doing by blocking distracting websites and programs for a specific amount of time – one of these is FocusMe, which I’ll discuss in this blog post.

What is FocusMe?

Focus Me is a program that runs in your taskbar.

How do I use FocusMe to stay focused?

You can set it to block certain websites and/or programs for a certain length of time – just click your secondary mouse button on the icon and choose “Block Additional,” then type in the web addresses you want to block, and/or the names of the programs you want to block. Then click on the icon again and choose “Focus,” and choose the amount of time you want to block websites and applications – if you try to bring up one of those websites or applications during that time, the program will automatically minimize it.

What if I need to use one of the websites or programs I’m blocking during that time?

If you need to use one of the websites or programs during one of your focus sessions, you can click your primary mouse button and type the five characters shown to unlock FocusMe so you can get to that website or program.

What other ways can I use FocusMe to become more focused?

You can look at your tracking reports for each day to see how much time you’re spending on different websites – If you find you’re still spending time on distracting websites or using distracting programs on your computer, you can add those websites or programs to your list of programs or websites that you want to block. You can al os use the time limiter to limit the amount of time you spend on distracting websites.

What if I work on different types of projects or for different clients?

You can create different profiles for the different types of work you do – you can customize which websites and applications you want to block on each profile – for example if you do phone work, you may want to create a phone work profile were you block websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google search. If you also write, you may want to create a separate profile where you allow Google search for any research you have to do, but block Facebook, Twitter and other sites and applications that could be distracting while you write.

Can FocusMe be used as a Pomodoro timer?

Yes, you can switch it to the Pomdoro mode and set the length you want your Pomodoros to be. For more information on the Pomodoro method, click here.

Can FocusMe be used on all electronic devices?

No, at this time there is only a desktop version of FocusMe, but if you’re interested in finding out if and when a mobile version becomes available, click here.

Where can I download FocusMe?

If you’re interested in downloading FocusMe, you can download it here.

UPDATE:

There is a new version of FocusMe available. It includes all the same features, but it’s now available for the macOS, Windows 10, 8 and 7, and the Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, among others.