This did the rounds a couple of weeks back, but I’m passing it on since it’s been invaluable.

Set your homepage to about:blank.

That’s it. I don’t fire up a browser unless I have a task in mind – per day it’s saved me probably 15 mins of aimless surfing, and freed 15 mins of productive time to write songs / cook / read.

(This is all part of a drive to make better use of my online time. I’ve trimmed my RSS feeds, deduped my del.icio.us tags, shifted my mailing lists. Now I just need to spend less time on time-saving chores…)