How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command • Hacker News Board

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#31

Post by fbelzile » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

blockmarker wrote: post #7

ineedasername wrote: post #2

I'd like something I could use to lock me out of everything but a whitelisted set of programs & websites for a set period of time. I can't tell you what a relief it would be to have little choice but to focus on work tasks instead of get distracted. Sure, I would need to have the key to the lock in case I really needed it, but it would need to be something mildly time consuming, like answering a set of relatively sim…

I use ColdTurkey, you can block any website or program you want on a schedule, or on a timer. You can add breaks, allowances and Pomodoro style setups. You can remove them whenever you want, but you can add a password I believe, or choose the option to be unable to remove the block while it is active(if you do this, make sure you leave a way to delete it). I too wanted something like that, must solve an equation or s…

Maker of Cold Turkey here. I'm humbled to see it mentioned here :)

For people that want to get locked into one app for set period of time (or a few apps, in the pro version), check out Micromanager: https://getcoldturkey.com/micromanager/

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#32

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

fbelzile wrote: post #31

blockmarker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use ColdTurkey, you can block any website or program you want on a schedule, or on a timer. You can add breaks, allowances and Pomodoro style setups. You can remove them whenever you want, but you can add a password I believe, or choose the option to be unable to remove the block while it is active(if you do this, make sure you leave a way to delete it). I too wanted something like that, must solve an equation or s…

Maker of Cold Turkey here. I'm humbled to see it mentioned here :) For people that want to get locked into one app for set period of time (or a few apps, in the pro version), check out Micromanager: https://getcoldturkey.com/micromanager/

Seriously thank you for Cold Turkey. I purchased Pro about 45 minutes after getting the recommendation and checking it out. This should let me get out of my back log hole in a week or two, and stay out of it. I've been stressing out for weeks that I've been unfocussed... I'm not sure the feeling will go away, but the unproductive side effects can be minimized. This isn't just a productivity boost for me, it's a mental health boost. Feel free to use that as a quote wherever you care to.

Micromanager looks interesting, though the advanced features of Cold Turkey Pro kind of let me do the same thing. But stripping off bits of features into less expensive stand alone apps seems a good idea for people that have specific needs instead of my more systemic attention issues at the moment... homeschooling kids while WFH is hard, switching back & forth without letting more distractions side track me is harder than I'd anticipated.

And if you had something for phones that did this, I'd buy that too... for now I'm just leaving my phone in another room. Low-tech & free!

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#33

Post by kccqzy » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

alanbernstein wrote: post #14

s_gourichon wrote: post #11

Long story short, this is related to keeping focus when you're working as a freelancer, with the same laptop used for work and personal life. There's a simple solution that has been working well for me for years: have 2 local accounts on the machine, with everything separated, even different visual themes (like, bright for personal time, grey for professional time), and a different base color, e.g. blue and green. On…

I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems like a completely unacceptable bug, but it has apparently existed for years. - home brew does not seem to expect to be used by two users, so I've had to switch into my personal account to use it. - configuring my os, shell, browser, etc now requires doing every…

It's possible to configure Homebrew to only install stuff in your home folder. But you do need a "manual" installation to achieve it. I have done it.

Re: How to force yourself to leave the computer using the leave command

#34

Post by Hackbraten » Sun, Nov 22, 2020, 11:20 AM UTC

spijdar wrote: post #16

alanbernstein wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems like a completely unacceptable bug, but it has apparently existed for years. - home brew does not seem to expect to be used by two users, so I've had to switch into my personal account to use it. - configuring my os, shell, browser, etc now requires doing every…

For anyone interested, the problem with homebrew is it relies on "/usr/local" being owned by the current user to allow installing software without needing a password every time you invoke "brew". Naturally this requires you only use that user to invoke homebrew. Macports does things in a more conventional way, requiring sudo to elevate privileges to root before installing software, but should also work properly on a…

I’ve had good results with the following method: https://gist.github.com/claui/ada85e696029cfa8cba9b91723ce2e...