10 Ways To Keep Facebook From Distracting You

The Internet offers a ton of distractions for you when you're trying to work, but Facebook might be the site you find yourself surprised to be on the most. There's something addicting about being completely up-to-date on everything your friends are doing, but sometimes it can really hurt your productivity. Good thing there are a number of ways to change your settings in order to keep Facebook from distracting you too much. Cut down on notifications, chat windows, and spammy inbox messages so you can get back to work. Grovo -- an online education platform for cloud computing, social media, and Internet strategy training -- offered the top 10 ways to keep Facebook from distracting you: Keep certain friends from chatting with you: Although Facebook chat is a great way to quickly communicate with friends, you can turn off chat for all of your friends, or just certain ones, if you don't want to be bothered. To customize your chat options, click the gear icon in the main chat window. Here, you can turn off chat altogether, check or uncheck chat sounds depending on whether you want to hear them or not, or press advanced settings" for more options. How do I keep a chat window from popping up? Muting a Facebook conversation allows you to keep someone from distracting you via chat. When you mute someone, mobile push notifications are turned off and chat windows won't pop up. To mute a conversation, click the gear icon in the upper-right-hand corner of the chat box or message screen. Then, choose mute conversation and confirm in the popup. How do I stop notification sounds and emails? Turning off Facebook notification sounds, text messages, and emails lets you easily control how you find out about others' interactions with you. Watch this 60-second Grovo video to learn how: Disable notifications for never-ending threads: When you comment on another user's post, you are automatically added as a follower and will receive notifications anytime someone posts a comment after you. If you don't want to receive notifications for posts you've commented on, you can always unfollow them. To follow or unfollow a post, go to the post in your News Feed and click the down arrow in the upper right, then select follow or Unfollow. Stop annoying application posts on your Timeline: Apps have the ability to post on your Timeline, which can get irritating after a very short time. Luckily, you can manually limit this ability on an app-by-app basis. To control app privacy, click the gear icon in the upper-right-hand corner and click account settings. Then, click apps on the left side. Control who can tag you: If you want to avoid friends of friends being able to find your Timeline like this, you can change the tagging permissions for your profile by clicking the lock icon in the upper-right of any page and choosing see more settings. Click the Timeline and tagging heading on the left. Tag review lets you review tags friends add to your posts or photos before they are published. Click edit and then choose enable from the drop-down to turn it on. There is also a second option that lets you decide who will be able to see when you're tagged in a post if they can't already. Make Facebook leave you alone: Facebook notifications can get annoying, especially if there is a lot of activity in one of your groups or apps. Luckily, you can control the notifications you get from any source. Watch this 60-second Grovo video to learn how: Block people without them knowing: Just like in the real world, sometimes people need to part ways on Facebook. You can block individual users by clicking the lock icon at the top right of any Facebook page, then choosing, "How do I stop someone from bothering me?" Type the offender's name or email in the box and click block. Select block from the list of people with that name to prevent him or her from starting conversations with you, and keep him or her from seeing your Timeline posts. Prioritize close friends in your News Feed: Facebook lists allow you to segment your friends into groups so that you can target certain people to share your content with, and create a News Feed with only those friends' updates. Facebook provides some default lists, like "Close Friends," "Acquaintances," and "Restricted." Adding friends to these will change how much information you see from each other. Filter your inbox messages: If you often receive messages from people or groups you don't know, Facebook's message filtering can automatically sort out messages that aren't from your friends and protect your inbox from spam. To filter your messages, click the messages icon at the top of any Facebook page and choose see all. Then, select the other link, and click edit preferences. Select basic filtering if you want all messages from friends and people you might know to go right to your inbox. Matt Clark is the director of communications at Grovo, where he oversees the company’s corporate messaging, media relations, and external brand-awareness efforts. Grovo is the leading online platform that trains users on top Internet tools and cloud services with 60-second, personalized videos. Clark brings nearly a decade of award-winning public relations, marketing and digital media experience to Grovo, with an emphasis on startups, Internet, and mobile technologies. Distracted image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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10 Ways To Keep Facebook From Distracting You

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