Show HN: A Firefox extension to break the habit of typing distracting websites

Haha - I tried it. It's shocking at first and annoying soon after. I figured that soft power is the way to go.

I've tried several tools similar to this, and they're all coming from the right place. But..

1) being told that this isn't the time to do something doesn't change that I feel it's time to do something. It just annoys me.

2) There's no substitute for simply making the choice to not go to those distracting web sites.

Distractions abound, but in my experience I've found that looking to technology to solve what is fundamentally an error in my thought process is a mistake. Changing the thought process isn't the easy way to go about it but it is ultimately the only way that's going to be effective in the long term.

Tools like this don't help much with that process[1]. Instead they provide [again, in my experience] a band-aid that helps cover the wound, so to speak - they let me avoid seeing that I needed to make changes.

[1] one benefit they do provide is to make you more aware of what you're doing.

I've used Leechblock, with fairly permissive settings (type a 64-bit key displayed on screen to override), and I think the annoyance is the point. It raises the psychological cost of going to a time-waster website, which makes it less desirable.

Set up an arduino interfaced via usb that delivers a shock every time you start to meander :D

More seriously - I think it's key to realize that sidetracking to various websites isn't the actual problem - it's more a symptom of not wanting to do the task at hand.

Here's what worked for me: When I started to suspect that this was costing me more time than I realized, I figured to measure it. I just started writing the time down each time I mentally wandered off and started browsing, and then again when I stopped.

It didn't take long to see that this added up to a depressing amount - but the awareness of how frequently and how long was critical for me, and the brief pause where I 'had' to write down something when I was about to start was enough for me to check myself and do one of two things:

1. (more frequently) realize that I wasn't in a mental state to get back on task, and take a quick walk, get a drink, w/e. The time to do this is much less than the time I'd spend on noodling about, still let me get my mind off of it briefly, and often let me become aware of why I was avoiding whatever the task was.

2. just get back on task (this became easier with time, though 1) is still sometimes more beneficial)

Hmm, maybe I should make a plugin for that :D

In any event, this manual tooling to simply track what I was doing was enough for me, and it worked better than throwing artificial obstacles into my path.

If you're on Firefox on the desktop, then it installs the add-on. To see which add-ons you have installed, go to Tools -> Add-ons in Firefox! Thanks for trying out the plug in :)