Works well. It cannot be turned off and you can set it for a specific amount of time. You choose the websites you would like to block.

Your phone is obviously a weak point, but it's a start.

I kid. It still works, although I use rescuetime now and it's pretty useful seeing how much time you waste on certain things. Costs money though.

I almost stopped using the app due to the lack of an off button, after my boss asked for some data and I could not get it on time because the website was not on my whitelist.

Luckily, there is a way of turning it off. If you don't want to know it skip the rest of this comment, and otherwise here it is, in case someone needs it: the app uses the local time, so by changing your computer's time forward you can end the block earlier.

It should be possible (if slightly annoying) to disable restrictions, but it should only ever be temporarily disabled.

Copy & paste?

I severely limit what's on my phone - no social apps, for example, and it's enough of a pain that I don't browse the Internet on it much. So I've mostly solved that problem.

I half wonder if I am not meant to work in front of a computer the rest of my life. I sometimes think it would be more beneficial to pursue something more blue collar like becoming an electrician or something similar. Sure, access to a smart phone these days still provides plenty of access to distractions, but what if my job wasn't so involved with actually NEEDING to be in front of a screen all day?

No idea if I could ever make the leap, but I do often see the appeal.

Source: I did this myself about 5 years ago, following a complete burnout on being a C++ developer. Worked as an electrician for about 18 months.

Great productivity booster

Edit: whoops forgot the link. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...

You can eliminate large swaths of the internet from loading in your browser and control what sets of sites are blocked when.

I change up the image every few days but I try to have it point to something like the recent Orion launch or a trip photo from the Portland Hikers Field Guide. Instead of redirecting to Google's homepage (which is what I did at first), seeing the image gives me positive reinforcement to pause and be more mindful about what I'm doing, where my head is at, etc.

It's been an enormous help in instilling my habit to stay focused.

Just having that schedule imposed on me for a few days was all it took for me to get out of the habit of opening a new tab and heading to one of the aforementioned sites any time I ran into a difficult problem. I've noticed an increase in my productivity, and I don't really even feel the need to twiddle away that time anymore.

The only solution that worked for me, which I figured out years later, was controlled caffeine intake with just the right calorie balance plus an interesting career that isn't affected by delayed sleep phase. With those two things, my motivation increases, scatterbrainedness decreases, and I can get significant things done.

But, as a counterpoint to the "beneficial" Mormon story, I would like suggest that my early experience in the organization was not very good (I left as soon as I was old enough to legally do so. I would have left at 13 had parents permitted.).

I am firmly convinced these types of organizations often induce strange mental problems of their own which are often far worse than the sins they are trying to cure.

Not to slam anyone's beliefs, just a counterpoint to "hey, this helped me!". It didn't help me, and it has very much unhelped a lot of people I have known. And I guess I really question whether this type of thing helps humanity as a whole.

I agree entirely. People well served by their community have little motivation to question it, but that doesn't mean that everyone would benefit from membership in that community, or even that the community is beneficial to society as a whole. I have many thoughts on the subject, and maybe one day I'll write more.

Would you mind sharing what kind of career you have chosen, or examples of others that fit this description?

Anyways, it's bit of a time consumer setting up said software initially but you benefit from a lot of angles once done. (Network security, content management, less likely to back track on systems that take more work to implement, as well as having a sophisticated and global system across all devices routed through the proxy server.) I believe some software packages even allow for the management of access times as well as content type. White list only a couple sites/ url's / IP's you use and white list them for only the time you need to be able to use them. Have someone else change the computer password on the server that you trust and boom. Just don't get distracted trying to circumvent security now...ha ha

Just a casual suggestion based upon experience as a school system administrator. Normally though if I am having a problem that starts in the mind, I develop a solution that either starts there or starts at whatever triggers it in my mind. Just a thought. Hack yourself you know?

What helped me was signing up to newsletters. Once a week I get newsletters summarising the most interesting links for HN, and also ones about Python, Big Data and Data Science.

I redirect HN/Reddit/Facebook to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file, because going to these sites is an automatic reaction in a browser, and all I need is a 404 to remind myself why I no longer visit them all day.

Lastly, I only use Facebook for chat but I get distracted by the feed. So I unfollowed everyone on my feed and now I don't have one.

1. http://www.hndigest.com/

Would love any feedback on the service!

I can see this happening in the near future. People using some technique to measure and restrict their Internet binge.