So how does this break down and can we draw any meaningful conclusions about it?  There were a series of questions in the study designed to do just that.  It would appear that those most likely to check their work email are also those people most worried about losing their jobs, either through redundancy or something else.

This would seem reasonable as work anxiety can easily cross over into holiday periods.  Those more addicted to their email however are also more likely to check their email.  People in the 18-24 age bracket were the biggest age group while those over 50 didn’t seem to mind leaving work behind for a while.

Of the total figures, 31% of people questioned said they would intermittently check their work emails with 15% intending to check them regularly.  By contrast just 34% of people had no intention of checking their work email at all.

There can be no doubt that work email can impact negatively on the rest of your life.  The Work Foundation Think Tank told the BBC that “It suggests that about two thirds of all employees feel the urge to respond to emails immediately as they come through.”  This is common in my experience and a symptom of the general immediacy of both email and instant messaging.

It is becoming more and more difficult to get away from work email too, with modern smartphones all offering Exchange support and more and more people having multiple inboxes on their phones and home PCs.

Personally I’ll have a few email clear days but while I’ll check work email as I’m self employed I don’t expect anything to happen as the companies I tend to work with have clear closedowns.  It is an interesting phenomenon though so we’d like to hear if you plan to check your work email over the Christmas holidays and if you think there should be a clear switch-off from work when away from the office.  Why not tell us in the comments below?

The following list contains tips that help me stay awake in those situations. Remember that I work at home and that some may not be suitable for your situation.

Lets start with the things to do when you are tired and need to overcome that tiredness.

Take a nap

This sounds counter-productive at first, especially if you do not wake up after 20 minutes of power napping. I often lay down on the couch, close my eyes and try to relax. I’m pretty good at waking up at the time that I want to wake up, no need for setting the alarm. If you are a heavy sleeper you may need an alarm, or someone else waking you.

Sometimes I put on my headphones and listen to music, with eyes closed. The music gives me an understanding of the time that has passed since starting the nap.

Drink Coffee, Black Tea, Caffeine, Water

I do not drink coffee or other caffeine containing drinks after five in the afternoon though as I do not sleep well if I overdo it. If you do not care, you could get the much needed boost with a cup of hot coffee.

You may also feel tired because you are dehydrated. Try to drink enough water throughout the day to avoid this from happening.

Chewing Gum

I do not know why, but chewing gum helps me stay awake. Maybe it is because it stimulates face muscles, maybe it is because of something else. If you do not have caffeine around, you may want to try chewing gum instead.

Walk, preferably outside

A short walk, preferably outside, helps me stay awake as well. Sometimes I walk to the nearest market to buy chewing gum (haha). Walking in combination with fresh air and sunlight seems to push away the feeling of tiredness.

If you cannot leave, try tapping your feet or moving your body on the chair. Take a short break to go to the toilet. While there, get some cold water on your hands and face. You can also open a window and stick your head outside for a while to get some fresh air.

Eat something light

Light eating may also revive your body up to a point where you can get through the day without dozing off. Do not eat something with to much sugar though. Nuts, Vegetables like carrots, a wholemeal sandwich with cheese are all things that you can eat.

Talk to someone

If you have someone nearby, start talking to them for a couple minutes. If possible, get up and walk with them while doing the talking.

Turn up the lights, if light is dim

Working in half-darkness or full darkness is not only not good for the eyes, but it can make you sleepy as well. Make sure you work under excellent lighting conditions.

Open a window, change room temperature

You may want to open a window to get fresh air into the room. This can help if the room temperature appears to be to warm, especially if you do not have access to the heating system to adjust the temperature.

I know that this is not the usual article you find here at Ghacks, but please bear with me on this one. To make it better, let me know how you overcome tiredness!

Breaks are important to reload your batteries, to rest your eyes and fingers, to get something to eat or walk around a bit to relax your body after sitting in a chair for a longer period of time.

You are responsible for your breaks, especially if you work on your own. A program like Breaker aids you by monitoring your work time and break time.

The program can be easily configured on the first start. The work time, break time and loops are configured in the application settings. These values refer to the hours and minutes that you intend your work and break intervals to last. The loop refers to the times the work and break pairs are repeated on that day. Say you configured the work time to be 2 hours, the break time to be 15 minutes and the loop to be 4 times. This would mean that you would spend a total of 9 hours at your workplace, with four 2-hour blocks of work for a total of eight hours and four 15 minute breaks in between for a total break time of one hour.

You may have a different break pattern, say a 15 minute break in the morning, then a 45 minute lunch break and then another 15 minute break in the afternoon.

You can switch to pattern mode in Breaker to configure break patterns where work and break times differ throughout the day. You basically ignore the loop and add as many work and break time pairs as you want to the application.

A click on the start button begins the monitoring and minimizes the application to the system tray. You can move your mouse over the program icon to see the remaining work time before the next break and the number of loops that remain.

The program displays a visual notification at break time, and another notification when the break is over and work time begins again.

The program does not support audio notifications which is probably the biggest shortcoming. Breaker is an easy to use break monitor for the Windows operating system. The program needs the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and will run on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

The attack was dreamt up by security expert Sam Kamkar who demonstrated at the Black Hat hackers conference a website exploiting common shortcomings in a router to reveal it’s real-world location.

He tricked the router into believing the request for it’s ID information was coming from the connected PC, not from the Internet.  He then used the revealed MAC address with a geo-location feature in Firefox to interrogate the database Google gathered when it made its Street View photographs.

The data, which was controversially gathered, linked the MAC addresses of routers to GPS co-ordinates.  “This is geo-location gone terrible,” said Mr Kamkar during his presentation. “Privacy is dead people. I’m sorry.”

Mikko Hyponnen, senior researcher at F Secure called the demonstration “very interesting” adding that such a technique could be used for “stalking or targeted attacks against an individual”.

“The fact that databases like Google Streetview’s Mac-to-Location database or the Skyhook database can be used in these attacks just underlines how much responsibility companies that collect such data have to safeguard it correctly.” said Mr Hypponen

In 2005, Mr Kamkar created a work that helped him gain more than 1 million MySpace friends in a single day.

Has it ever happened to you that you sit down on your computer to finish some work and be productive only to be distracted by emails, notifications, RSS feeds, Twitter messages, Skype or any other information that are not work related?

If you answered this with yes you probably have a understanding of how much time those activities cost in the long run.

Stay Focusd is an extension for the Google Chrome web browser that offers two main features. The first is the ability to block sites or pages and set a specific time these pages can be viewed per day in the web browser.

StayFocusd is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend browsing time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time for the day has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.

It is highly configurable, allowing you to block or allow entire sites, specific subdomains, specific paths, or even specific pages

The extension places an icon in the Google Chrome toolbar that provides access to the blocking controls and options of the extension.

A left-click on the extension displays the menu shown in the screenshot above. Here it is possible to block the entire domain or a custom url by clicking on the advanced options link.

Blocking a custom url is helpful if multiple services are offered on a website of which some need to be used for work. Blocking google.com for instance would block Google Reader and Gmail but also the ability to use the search engine.

The custom url blocking could here be used to block only Google Reader and Gmail but not the main Google website.

The options of the extension can be used to change the time in minutes that blocked websites may be viewed, limit the active days and hours (e.g. allow all websites on weekends), select the daily reset time and manage blocked and allowed sites with the option to add multiple urls to both listings in one go.

There are also two options that reduce the likeliness to cheat. The first is a challenge. This can be activated so that the extension will display a task to the user whenever the option’s need to be accessed.

This challenge takes some time as it requires the user to re-type a text (copy paste is not working as it tracks the chars entered).

The second option is called nuclear option This can be used to block all websites or all websites but the allowed sites for a set amount of hours.

Stay Focusd is an interesting extension, especially for users who need that little extra push to keep work focused. There are obviously lots of options to cheat like using a different web browser or uninstalling the extension but users who would do that are not the primary focus of the extension anyway.

Stay Focusd can be downloaded from the Google Chrome extensions gallery.

That’s were Vanishd comes into play. The service hides your private website by placing a authorized websites, for example Google Search, in front of it. Don’t worry, it’s not about placing a browser window over another browser window which could be done manually as well. It’s about merging two browser windows and providing a link to a sneak peak window that lets you watch through the first authorized browser window to view the second.

Vanishd adds a button to the first window. Once that button is pressed it will provide access to a rectangular are that can be moved with the mouse that shows the contents of the private website.

The user can change the size of the viewing window with the mouse wheel and the viewing window will automatically disappear if he moves the mouse out of the browser window or right-click in view mode.

View mode is the default mode that allows you to view the contents of the hidden page. If you want to interact with it you need to click the left mouse button which switches to interactive mode. This mode allows you to interact with the website normally.

The officially supported browsers are Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox 2. Firefox 3 is available in experimental mode and seems to make some troubles with flash contents.

Some websites do not work with Vanishd including Google Mail or Yahoo Mail. It should also be noted that the contents of the hidden website will appear in the browser cache.

It is even possible to add your own message to customize the add-on. The settings can be set to a specific day and time of the day until the office beer o’clock. The user can select the interval between messages that are shown and there is even a “getting close” period in which the reminders are displayed more frequently.

That’s definitely a fun way to spend the days in the office. I would probably either add dozens of new messages or change the interval to display a message to once or twice a day instead.

The stats are displayed at the homepage of pageaddict, urls are automatically added to the list once you visited them. Tags can be applied by creating a new tag first and then applying it to one of the urls that is already displayed. You may restrict access to a certain url by selecting that option and choosing an amount of minutes that the user is allowed to visit that site. If the limit is reached the page will not load and page addict will display the message “get back to work!”.

Not really a security feature but one that could work as a reminder that you should get back to work and stop reading a certain website..