Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I'll likely get judged for this, but I'm using a paid proprietary Windows Application (w/browser extensions) called "Cold Turkey" (no association, just a customer). It has Pomodoro Timers, but they're enforced, meaning you can blacklist out certain applications or websites during your "work" blocks and allow them during your free time. I'm doing 20/20 during the work-day, with an hour off for lunch.

I'll say this about that specific application: You can tell whoever created it, created it for themselves. What I mean by that is that they really gave a lot of thought into how people may try and disable or bypass it. For example there're different ways to lock your own rules, to stop you trying to remove your favorite website during the middle of a work-day.

As I said I'll get judged, but truthfully a lot of bad habits can use a helping hand to break. People just don't take social media (Reddit, HN, YouTube, et al) seriously as a potentially addictive habit.

PS - I won't link it since this already reads like an advert. It costs $40, the free version I don't consider useful and doesn't support Pomodoro Timers. Their privacy policy is legit, and the software outside of updates is offline.

Note that HN has a small amount of procrastination-blocking built-in. It's the "noprocrast" setting in your user profile.

"If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours."

I've used that before, and it is useful. The thing I didn't love is that it makes no distinction between my free time and work time. Meaning on the evenings or weekends, I'd have the same restrictions as my 9-5 Monday-Friday.

Having used Cold Turkey before, I can confirm that it's really good at doing what it set out to do (though I have a few annoyances with it, since there are a few things it doesn't allow me to do). What's impressive about it is that it is quite difficult to bypass it, and all of the naive approaches just won't work (eg. uninstalling it or switching to a different account).

I wish there were a Linux equivalent of it, but nowadays I don't need it as much as before anyway—I'm not sure if that's complacency, or if I just got better at focusing.

A similar Mac version of this is HeyFocus - https://heyfocus.com It is paid but it really gets the job done. I don't really use it these days (kinda built up the habit). I remember setting the quotes to just one phrase -- "Get the F*K back to Work" or something like that or was it like "You ought to be Working" (as seen in the ceiling of Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man.

Doesn’t apple have screen time for this purpose?

Cold Turkey also works on Mac FYI

I’ve set up a PI Hole at work with blocklist of social media, YT and similar sites exactly for that. Whenever I want to check any of them I need to go to PI Hole admin site, log in and disable blocking. Having to do that is in 90% cases enough to stop me from procrastinating. When I really need it for work, these few more steps don’t make a difference.

Why would anyone judge you? I used to use CT as well, over time I realized I needed it less and less so its job was done for me, nevertheless it trained my focus well. The founder is great too, I accidentally bought an extra copy back around ten years ago and the founder reimbursed me nearly immediately after I caught the error and emailed them.

I've used it for a few years, great app!

Will link it instead. :)

https://getcoldturkey.com/

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