Tips for Improving Your Productivity in Google Chrome with Extensions

I have major productivity issues, as I work online and the temptation to watch YouTube for an hour and a half is incredibly strong. Luckily, I use Google Chrome along with a half dozen special extensions designed to make me a more productive person.

If you use Google Chrome, here are a few tips for improving your productivity with the help of a few key extensions.

Block your ads. Ads take up your browser's memory and in some situations they can greatly slow down your browsing. If you're trying to be as productive as possible, you can't have that.

AdBlock should be one of the first Google Chrome extensions that you install to increase your productivity. It works quickly and you can enable ads on certain pages if you've got a reason to do so. No wonder it's the top extension on Chrome.

Block time-wasting websites. StayFocusd is a Chrome extension that blocks certain websites when an allotted amount of time has been used. For instance, I have a problem where I'll spend an hour or two a day on Facebook. StayFocusd can limit me to 20 minutes during business hours. It also has a "nuclear option" which blocks every website other than the ones in your "safe" list.

StayFocusd is a very powerful productivity tool, and although it can be annoying, it certainly makes you more productive.

Monitor Yourself. If StayFocusd isn't enough for you or you don't want to limit your browsing abilities, at least monitor them. RescueTime shows you how your Internet usage stacks up when compared to other Chrome users so you can tell if you have a serious browsing problem.

It's another powerful productivity extension and a no-nonsense, no arguments way to look at your Internet use. Highly recommended for small offices. The employee with the least unnecessary browsing gets free pizza or something, right?

Improve your copying and pasting. If you're using Google Chrome for any type of regular work, you're probably copying and pasting a lot. I use Chrome when I'm researching an article, and until recently, I'd have to copy things into Notepad and then copy them again to get rid of the formatting on many web pages.

Of course, this is annoying, and there's a way around it. The Chrome extension Copy Without Formatting makes it much easier to copy and paste text from Google Chrome, allowing you to do your research without changing screens all the time. For power users, there's also an extension that allows you to instantly copy any selected text without extra button clicks called Auto Copy.

Know of any other great productivity extensions for Google Chrome? Post in our comments section below.