

Ask HN: Procrastination tools for sites/apps other than HN - russjhammond

I have enabled the procrastination settings for HN over the past week and love it.  It keeps me focused when I am logged in and keeps me from coming back to waste time.<p>I would love programs that are similar, especially for email (I use Apple Mail) or Reddit &#38; Digg.  Any suggestions?
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jbrennan
I've been a big fan of Concentrap <http://getconcentrating.com> It lets you
set periods of time where you'll be focusing on a certain task, and lets you
perform actions when you start and end that period.

For example, when you start a "Work" concentration period of say, 50 minutes,
you can have it block a list of domains (HN, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook,
whatever you choose), have it quit your IM apps, and launch your Text editor,
for example. It's a wonderful and effective app.

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russjhammond
Wow, that looks awesome. Thanks for the suggestion. Have you setup any scripts
to run with it? If so I would be curious what you setup?

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jbrennan
I don't use any external scripts, I just set mine to block problematic domains
for me (places where I find I sink a lot of time, HN, Reddit, Twitter are the
primary ones), and usually I make it close my IM client (or sometimes set my
status to Busy), close Twitter, and my feed reader. Then I'm good to go.

I find 50 minutes is a good duration for me. During the ten minutes downtime
in an hour, I let myself read Twitter, and get up and walk around the office.
Then back to work.

It's marvellous for staying on task.

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russjhammond
Do you tend to use it everyday or only on the days you are having a hard time
concentrating?

And while we are at it, any other great anti-procrastination/focus apps or
tricks you have found lately that work really well?

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karlzt
addon for firefox: <http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html>

and chromium:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji)

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satishmreddy
<http://www.rescuetime.com/>

