With the Halloween festivities in hype, the pressure to get all of our work done early is definitely intense for Wake Forest students. If you’re anything like me, the mountain of work left to do stresses me out when I begin to think about all the activities I want to participate in this week, including Project Pumpkin, parties, dressing up (Mean Girls style), and, most importantly, eating my weight in candy. Unfortunately, it can be hard to sit down and force us to work without getting distracted by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Her Campus, the list could go on for days. Luckily, we don’t have to depend on will power alone to get us through the monotonous hours of work.
Let me introduce you to “Self Control.”
“Self control” is a free application that you can download to your computer. This app allows you to block yourself from distracting websites for a designated amount of time. All you do is add the websites you want to block to your “black list”, set a time limit and you will be set for a distraction free study zone. Even if you turn off your computer or log out, you still wont be able to access the website until the timer is up. This may sound a little excessive and you may be thinking “Really? People these days don’t have enough self control to buckle down and get work done?” But let’s be honest with ourselves, we live in a society where we can attain practically anything over the Internet. It’s both a blessing and curse and sometimes, the entertainment values outweigh the academic ones.
For those Demon Deacons who have religiously stuck to the Lenovo ThinkPads (props to y’all), no worries, “Self Restraint” is another app modeled off of Self-Control, which works just as well for PCs!
If you get as distracted as I do, these apps are lifesavers and are definitely worth a try, especially because they are both FREE. Happy studying Deacons!
To Download Self Control, visit http://selfcontrolapp.com/index.html
To Download Self Restraint, visit http://parker.kuivi.la/projects/selfrestraint.html