Do you have a Facebook? Possibly a Twitter? Or maybe you’re one of those inactive Google Plus folks? There’s even the case that you don’t have any of these and you’re having fun over at Diaspora. In any case, you’re always susceptible to becoming addicted to your favorite social network and avoiding work or some other task that needs to get done. Hopefully I can provide a solution.

In this article, I hope to inform you of a few ways to be more productive with the time you spend on the Internet and hopefully aid you in the fight to stay off those evil social networks during work or any other time when you shouldn’t be on them …

The Facts

According to a new study performed by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, the highest rate of “self-control failures” were linked to online social networking. This study actually shows that Facebook and Twitter are more addicting than alcohol or tobacco! However, I’m not going to go too in-depth on this because that’s not what this article is about — though the two do have a connection, so I’d advise reading more about this study here.

Starting Fresh in the Morning

I don’t know about you, but when I sit down at my desk in the morning I’m usually refreshed and ready to start writing or perform any other tasks that need to be completed. I feel as if I could write on and on all day about anything. Sadly, all of this dies after about an hour or two. Why? Maybe I’m just not someone who tolerates long sitting sessions or something, but as far as I’ve heard, no one is. One great way to balance your life is to get a Jawbone UP and program it to vibrate, reminding you that it’s time to go walk around the complex or do something a bit more physically active.

All these things work great for the situation described above, but what if you’re really busy with some work and it just can’t be finished later? I personally think that you should just give it a break. Taking a walk outside will enhance your productivity much more than continuing the project will. Go take a thirty-minute break and come back refreshed. It sounds stupid, but it really does help. Creating a balance is what you need to continue a productive day.

Now you’re probably wondering by now what happened to social networks. Well, I decided to throw them aside for a few minutes while I talked about something that still relates to the subject in a way. Now, on to social networks …

Don’t Visit Facebook, Twitter or Even Check Your Email at First Light

That’s right, leave them alone — they can wait. Starting your morning with social networking is preparing your day for disaster. There’s no reason to wake up and immediately check to see if someone had posted on your Facebook wall or mentioned you on Twitter while you were asleep. Now I’m not saying that this stuff isn’t important, but it does have its time and place and its time is not right when you wake up in the morning. If you just start using a social network immediately after waking up, then your day is practically ruined. Try starting fresh and avoiding all online communication just as your day begins to get underway.

Make use of apps like Concentrate for Mac

Rocket (aka “Made by Rocket”) has developed a beautiful Mac app titled Concentrate. Concentrate is designed to assist you in avoiding distractions by automatically quitting certain apps like Safari, Google Chrome, Twitter, Mail, Sparrow, etc. It also has other abilities, such as automatically opening apps that are required for your current task, running custom scripts, setting your iChat or Skype status to “away”, automatically opening documents, playing messages and sounds, and so on. You can learn more about Concentrate here. There is also a nice Windows app named RescueTime available for users of the alternative platform. It’s not as great as Concentrate, but it does its best to offer assistance to a distracted person.

Turn off text message alerts from Facebook and Twitter

Both Facebook and Twitter offer text message alerting services that will let you know if you have new messages, wall posts, mentions, comments, etc. with just multiple annoying texts. These are great if you desperately need to know what your friends are saying about you and your status, but there’s absolutely no reason to have it enabled if you’re trying to stay on task. So, head over to Facebook and Twitter and disable those notification settings right before starting your day — or even permanently.

Also avoid Hacker News, Reddit and forums

If you get distracted easily, then it would be best to not visit news blogs or forums like Gizmodo, Reddit, or even Yahoo! Answers discussions. In addition, I would recommend staying off YouTube because it’s literally the next generation of your television — which, to me, isn’t distracting at all, but I know a lot of people who have issues working and watching TV at the same time.

Writing? Use a distraction-free app and turn off WiFi

If you’re a writer or blogger then I’d highly suggest not writing in WordPress and instead turning off WiFi completely and using something like iA Writer or Byword for Mac. If you don’t have a Mac, then check out Ommwriter — it’s a beautiful Windows alternative. Or, try out Typerighter, a great online distraction-free writing app we recently reviewed. In addition to this, you may even want to turn off your mobile phone.

Wrapping It Up

I really hope that I helped you with your daily struggles, but if not, then please tell us how you manage avoiding social networks during your daily work!