- RSS FeedSubscribe
- « Previous PostHer Desire, His Rule
- Next Post »A La Carte (5/17)
LeechBlock Changed My Life
- 05/16/11
- 28
I want to tell you about LeechBlock. It's a little tool I found about a couple of years ago and I can say without a trace of exaggeration that it changed my life. I wrote about it once before—back after I discovered it—but want to come back to it since it’s proven its value again and again since then.
There was a time that I was unable to keep myself from wasting vast amounts of time on the internet. Often it was subconscious; I would suddenly become aware that I had stopped working and started surfing. I had inadvertently left behind what I had been doing and was checking in at Facebook or Twitter or any one of these other time-sucking distractions. Thanks to LeechBlock, those days are over.
LeechBlock is an add-on for Firefox. It is the brainchild of James Anderson, an assistant professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte.
The premise is simple. It is meant to be an external form of self-control for those of us who do not have sufficient self-control in and of ourselves. Here is what James says about it: "LeechBlock is a simple productivity tool: an extension for the Firefox web browser designed to block those time-wasting sites that can suck the life out of your working day. (You know: the ones that rhyme with 'Blue Cube', 'Pie Face', 'Space Hook', 'Hash Pot', 'Sticky Media', and the like.) All you need to do is specify which sites to block and when to block them."
It is not meant to replace tools that offer parental controls and will not keep you from stumbling across nasty sites on the Net. That is not its purpose. What it will do, though, is allow you to compile a list of the sites that suck away the minutes and hours of your day and choose the times during which you will be blocked from those sites. So in my case I listed Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Drudge Report and others like them and set the program to block these from 9 to noon and 1 to 5. That gives me a window to check in while I eat my lunch but otherwise I have no access to these sites during the working day. And that has proven a huge blessing.
I learned two things. First, I learned that I spent far more time on these sites than I would have thought. Or, perhaps more properly, I learned that I visited them many more times every day than I would have imagined. The amount of times LeechBlock had to intervene and scold me was both shocking and humiliating. Second, I learned that these sites really were sucking my time away from me. As soon as I installed LeechBlock it was like I added a couple of hours to my day. Not only did my productivity increase but my spiritual condition also improved. I had known that I was wasting vast amounts of time but had not had the self-control to stop myself; I found it very depressing and carried it like a great burden. It was a great relief to me to find that self-control, even if it took a Firefox add-on to do so.
One of the great features of LeechBlock is it allows you to create a custom message that appears when you attempt to visit one of the sites you've blocked. In my case I made one that reminded me of the value of time. You can see it here (click on it to download it for your own purposes):
Now I know that not everyone needs a tool like this one. But I can testify that there are others who do and I am among them. I've recommended LeechBlock to friends and they've told me how much they've benefited from it as well. So I'm not alone! If you are in need of an external source of self-control, consider it. It may just change your life too. You can learn more about it and download it here.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (28)
StayFocusd appears to offer a similar feature set for anyone using Google Chrome.
Rescue Time is similar (in fact the paid version is far more advanced and offers many great features) and operates on the OS level rather than the browser level. This help those of us who have 3+ browsers installed. It also allows tracking of non-internet computer time usage. I would highly recommend checking it out.
Thanks Bart, was just about to ask that. Now blocking Challies.com…
Did I just hear your iPhone notify you of another comment?It’s hard to escape…
I’ve been using LeechBlock for a while and agree with everything in your post. The amount of time it’s saved me is incredible - and scary. I had no idea it was developed by somone at RTS. Thanks for the graphic too!
Thanks for the heads up on this Tim. I’ve been convicted about my internet time recently. It’s so easy to get sucked into all of the available information. I’m going to give this a go and see how it works.
Here’s another Chrome alternative for Leech Block:Chrome Nanny
An interesting site for group accountability is covenanteyes.com - they provide tracking of your internet usage and send it to your selected accountability partners. My men’s group has used this with some success. It’s biggest selling feature is that it shows what “nasty” sites you may have visited in a ranked system (like our movie ratings G, PG, R, but on a numeric scale 1-100), but an interesting use if your accountability partners are willing to put in the effort is that it can track your time periods of greatest internet use and what sites you are visiting the most. So if you are supposed to be spending time with your wife from 6-9 and you visited facebook 150 times in that period…well something’s up.
Thanks for the tips on all these resources… this is an on-again/off-again issue that I have, and it has become noticeable to others. Looking forward to trying these out. (Good tip on blocking all 3 browsers too.)
Anything like this for iPhone/iPad?
hey thanks for this testimonial on the program. My friend Josh was talking about a program like this I believe. I’ll have to consider this. I like your Boston quote here : )
Chrome Nanny is great. I’ve never used Leechblock but the developer of Chrome Nanny claims it has all the same features. She even got the developer of Leechblock’s permission to basically ripoff his program for another browser.
This idea seems like a great tool, but I have to ask the question. Are facebook, wikipedia, and youtube bigger problems than an RSS reader with blogs like these? I have a few blogs that have 4-5 posts a day by different authors, and it seems like reading blogs can be a greater issue than having music on youtube, or facebook or wikipedia tabbed as I do other things. I guess it’s a personal issue, but I just think cutting out certain distractions and leaving, or even encouraging others, seems to defeat itself yes?
Thank you for an encouraging message with the follow up tips and tools. Basic e-mail is enough to trip me up and cause lots of time-wasting. I feel very burdened about it. I am a distance worker from home and have to practically beat myself in order to buckle down and be productive. It’s terrible. I have tried to spiritualize this matter with repentance from sin, to no avail. I think the Lord is sending help through various means, including Tim’s post, et al. But now, I have to get back to work.
Sorry, I can’t waste time looking at sites like leechblock…
Thanks - that’s really helpful!
ironically i am reading this because i clicked on the facebook link while i was at work…
Hi, how do I use your graphic for the leechblock block page?
Under the page to show, there’schrome://leechblock/locale/blocked.html
Where do i find this file and change it to the one i want? (eg. your graphic. I know i can just my homepage as your graphic and route to that instead, but I want to preserve my current homepage so that’s out. )
So really, all it does is provide a way to police yourself. Could be useful I suppose.
Help me out, “Hash Pot”? Can’t place that one…
Click on the graphic in Tim’s post to go to the larger version. Right-click and save the image to your PC - for instance, maybe in a directory called c:\temp.Now go to LeechBlock and on the How To Block tab enter this:file:///c:/temp/grunge_card.jpg
I didn’t see it listed here, but I use a helpful app for the Mac, ironically titled Self-Control: http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/
Another great feature of Leechblock is that you can block sites after a certain amount of time, as well as specific times. I find this more helpful at home when I don’t want to block myself from social networking sites altogether, but also can’t specify an appropriate time period to allow/disallow. Instead I can say (for example) no more than 20 minutes a day for facebook.
You can also have different block lists, and block them in different ways. So at work, some sites (wikipedia is a good example) has legitimate use as well as being potential time black holes. Having a time limit on these sites is sometimes better than block periods. That’s what’s is great about leachblock, its flexibility.
As a student who is about to take a final exam in one of James Anderson’s classes in a matter of hours and STILL came over here first thing when I logged on to study, I should seriously consider this extension!
The tool allows you to block whatever sites you wish. Not sure about RSS feeds.
I have blocked wikipedia and facebook, but left things like youtube, because I don’t go there very often. I used to get easily distracted by twitter, but haven’t been on for a long time now. If I start turning to twitter to meet the distraction-addiction (ha!) maybe I’ll have to add that one, too.
Most of the blogs I check only have one post per day, so I don’t find those to be a timewaster in the same way Facebook/Wikipedia are.
I hear you, John. My #1 biggest distraction is TweetDeck. #2 would be Google Reader. I recently unsubscribed to most of my Reformed blogs on Reader, and followed the writers on Twitter instead so that I could still see links to their blog posts and wouldn’t feel such a compulsion to check Reader all the time. I’ve found that doing that helps some — it’s easier for me to ignore new tweets than an unread blog post on Reader — but it still leaves the door open for a lot of time-wasting. I agree with you that if we’re going to be serious about changing our habits, we need to look at RSS readers and not just specific websites.
Thanks, Tim, for posting this resource. I, too, constantly struggle with the temptation to check various sites throughout the day. It eats up a ton of my work time, and I keep trying to discipline myself and failing. I will try out LeechBlock (or a Chrome equivalent) and see if it helps.
Tim,You know if there is a way to get your image in the place of the leechblock image on the site blocked page? Or how to make a page that is similar to the leechblock page that has your image. I don’t have the time or expertise to whip one up real quick, or I’d also make it ask me questions about my spiritual life, other goals, etc.Mark
Tim, how did you block Google Reader? Every time I try to block it, it blocks all of google.com. I even tried blocking reader.google.com but then it let me right on through.