It’s Tuesday night of finals week. Reports are due. I’m still cleaning up the background section of the first draft of my senior project which is due tomorrow. I’ve got a practicum in the morning too. Haven’t looked at what I need to do. I’ve got two exams on Thursday. Haven’t studied yet. Its 2 A.M. and I'm in my bed, watching YouTube.
Why am I watching YouTube? I literally have four important things to do that I just mentioned to myself, in my head of course. Yet here I am, distracted beyond measure, looking up some dude use a hydraulic press to crush a random assortment of round objects (great channel by the way, would recommend subscribing).
Before you, I lay the top 10 online distractions that you may find yourself dealing with during crunch time.
10. Facebook
Might as well be the endless scroll bar to academic hell. The longer you scroll, the lower your GPA gets. Kind of ironic that in this time of focus that you are too busy watching random short videos your friends shared. Either that or you’re getting ready to tag someone to a photo that you just got tagged in. The photo? It’s a camel. The meme was “Tag the first person you think of when you look at this picture”.
9. YouTube
I just referenced the Hydraulic Press channel (there are several by the way), but it gets much worse. Hope you don’t like video games, because there is a ton of funny videos on people messing up in Call of Duty. Want to see a ton of stuff break in slow motion? Not a problem. Just be mindful that time isn’t going as slow as the video you’re watching. 2 A.M.? Sounds like I can watch one more video.
8. Reddit
There are some really funny people in this world. Some of those people have access to the internet. Of those people, there are those who have a lot of time on their hands. Half of their material is on Reddit, and yes, you can look at it. You will cackle, cry, ponder, and google nearly everything and anything that the user-generated content of Reddit has at its disposal. Almost forgot to mention the comment section of each of those items. It’s going to be a long night, and an awful morning thereafter.
7. Amazon/Other General Shopping Sites
“I actually really need this right now”. You tell yourself that every time the ad space pulls up that promo for a new pen that doesn’t smudge when you write with it.
Umm, right-handed people don’t have that problem…
Okay, so I’m left handed. I saw the pen on StumbleUpon the other day and thought it was really cool. Google already sold that search data to the ad companies so now I see this thing everywhere. Needless to say, I'm probably going to buy it. That took 30 minutes, and even with 1-day shipping it’s not going to help me with the written part of that practicum tomorrow.
6. StumbleUpon
Imagine someone Googled cool stuff for you.
What?
You heard me. Cool stuff. On the internet. Someone is typing and clicking “I’m Feeling Lucky”, and by god they are getting lucky. This isn’t actually how StumbleUpon works, but you get the point. Hours. Hours spent. At least I got to see a really nice photo of the Appalachian Mountains, and learned about how complicated recycling is!
5. Google
“Ask me anything!” It’s a trap. Don’t ask google anything. Look, its not that important to understand why male seahorses give birth but females don’t at this very moment. I know you watched it on the National Geographic channel on YouTube. Please contain your curiosity for five minutes so you can at least read the exam study concepts for Thursday.
4. Netflix
God almighty, don’t introduce me to the next season of Game of Thrones. I just saw *&%$*&^@#$@ die, and can’t imagine (*&$%(#*$% getting stabbed in the back for at least two more episodes. Maybe I’ll just re-watch the first couple episodes of Scrubs. That was a great show! It is now 3 A.M.
3. Spotify
Woah woah woah this doesn’t make sense. Music is actually good for studying. I literally just Googled it.
True. Some music is good for studying, and yes, different people like listening to different types of music for studying, so I can’t make claim that the “Focus” genre is the only safe genre to run a playlist on while working.
Let me say this though. You know that moment when you can’t find the right song to listen to while reviewing that paragraph your group partner wrote pretty hastily? Those seconds you spend contemplating the next song that came up in which you play the whole song in your head and then go “nah”, skip to next song, and do that all over again until the song that you actually wanted to hear comes up? Yeah, those seconds add up. Good luck reading that paragraph while singing to Katy Perry. That’s right, I can see you listening to Wide Awake at 4 in the morning. It’s on my feed at the top right, and yes I can see that you’re on your personal playlist.
2. Instagram
Thought I wouldn’t go here? I thought you wouldn’t scroll all the way down on that profile to the point where you’re now five years down the rabbit hole. Press that thumb wisely. If you’re the kind of person who puts up more photos than scrolls through them, please take a stopwatch and lap your time whenever you decide on the right filter for that subpar photo which is going to get only 100 likes.
After 5 days of course.
That was mean. I apologize. 100 likes in two days. Relax on the hashtag count though, it took you like 3 minutes just to type them all.
1. Twitter
This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. 140 characters, and yet so much more is said on a typical basis. This is the battle ground for people of all strides. Famous people, political people, regular people, Donald Trump. Everyone likes to duke it out here for some reason, and it’s a slaughter fest.
Pull out the popcorn and sit back, because T-Swift is on a rampage. The NFL still sucks. Only thing left to post is a small eulogy to the passing grade you would’ve had, had you gone to bed at a reasonable time.
All these distractions can put a major burden on your performance in life. Academics aren’t the half of it. Sleep is important just for getting everything else in your life done right! Need help staying away from all of this?
Download the Google plug-in called StayFocusd. You set the rules for what sites are blocked, and for how long! Are you physiologically attached to your phone? StayFocusd recommends an app called Freedom. It does the same thing as StayFocusd, except it’s for the apps on your phone! There's plenty of other free self-control apps out there. If the two I'm mentioning here don't work for you, go find one that does help! The internet can be a major distraction to when you need to get important things done. Ironically enough, you need the internet most of the time to do a lot of the important work you have. Take advantage of these useful tools and finish your work on time.
