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It's a pretty simple and free solution, takes maybe 10 minutes to install and configure.
Yes there are fairly easy ways to get around the blocks, but 90% of the time I'm able to respect the block and so it saves hours of time daily.
Add whatever site is sucking up your time to /etc/hosts.
Add whatever site is sucking up your time to /etc/hosts.
Forgive my ignorance, but what does this do? I'm interested. Would I just add Twitter/Reddit/whatever to the file with an IP of 0.0.0.0 so it throws an error or something?
It’s a lot tougher than /etc/hosts: Disabling it during a locked block is very hard. That’s perfect for me.
I permanently blocked all news sites and gave me an allowance for HN.
There are also extensions that remove the recommended feed from Reddit, so you can still interact with pages found from search, but can’t discover new content once on Reddit. That greatly reduces my time spent there.
I have the same problem solved for kid with coin dispenser and coin acceptor. Coin acceptor is connected right to OpenWrt router via USB. Once you put a quarter, it turns on Internet for 30 more minutes. Dispenser is connected to PC with the app where he has to solve (not very hard) math puzzles. When you reach the score of 10, the coin is getting dispensed. Internet usage is down 2-3 times now, compared to what it w…
Is the router off for everyone when disabled or is it like an IP based block using the router's API to add and remove blocks on demand?
Productivity is temporary, discipline is forever.
They let you create a highly flexible schedule (e.g. lunch breaks), and even support Pomodoro Timers (e.g. 20 on, 20 off, etc). But the biggest feature is privacy respecting (i.e. non-cloud, non-sharing data with advertisers) and non-subscription. It is just an old-fashioned desktop application with several browser extensions.
They have some nice website lists to save initial setup time like "social media" or "shopping" that will nuke all the big names. But they support wild cards or even application specific blocks. HN isn't in the "social media" list by the way.
It is designed to be hard to bypass/disable/modify. Even how each individual block's settings are locked is very configurable, which is nice.
The UI does suffer from the "invisible button" trend, so you'll have to figure out that there are three buttons under each block none of which look like clickable buttons (schedule config, break config, and settings-lock config). Also, the "On" button enables/disables the SCHEDULE rather than the block itself. So if a block isn't working after scheduling making sure it is "On" too.
PS - No doubt I'll get crapped on by the "just self-control" crowd. I'd argue that if this problem was easily overcome, people wouldn't be making threads on the topic and continuing to have problems. I don't think application enforcement should be anyone's long term goal, I see it more like a Nicotine Patch, a temp middle-ground to help make achieving your goals easier.
Whenever I find myself doing this it’s always because I am avoiding something (either doing something or thinking about something).
Find out what those things are, and deal with them.
Personally, I blocked most websites on my primary browser on my work computer, and I set a maxvisit and minaway on my hackernews profile. So I get 20 minutes of slacking off on hackernews, and then I get booted off for a few hours, and the other time sucks are blocked. I've also turned off history auto-suggestions in my search/URL box, so that when I look for a website it only suggests relevant work locations I defin…