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I use egg timers for the beginning of the day. Sometimes I'm super specific and other times I settle for "I'll do 75 minutes of programming before looking at other things".

It really works.

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Seconding this approach. I generally do a bastardized pomodoro[1] approach where I split productive/non-productive time 50/10 minutes. This has the added bonus of really making you focus on the task at hand knowing you will be interrupted in 50 minutes[2]. If you find it impossible to be away from the internet for 50 minutes at a time, you could always start small and work your way from there (eg 10/5, 15/5, etc).

[1] http://pomodorotechnique.com/

[2] Of course we all know a lot of things take more than 50 minutes so adjust appropriately.

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